54. Black Friday Survival Tips

Saturday, September 09, 2023

Smooth Operator/Podcast/54. Black Friday Survival Tips

54. Black Friday Survival Tips

CUSTOM JAVASCRIPT / HTML

Black Friday is my favorite time of the year to be in marketing! Seriously, it’s just fun.

After several years of promotions, I’m sharing some of the tips that have enabled me to operate at my best throughout the holiday.

These are practical and can be employed right away. I hope this gets you in the best position for a rocking holiday season!

Learn more at https://www.adamliette.com

Discover how to work with me: https://www.adamliette.com/work-with-me

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Transcript

What's going on out there smooth operators. Welcome to the show today. So if you're anything like me, right now, you're in those final preparation phases for the greatest weekend. Of The Year, Black Friday, Cyber Monday weekend. You know what you love it, you might hate it a little bit, but I always rebel in this weekend. I just genuinely do it. I look forward to it all year. It's a time of genuine fun for me. I love marketing, I love times of absolute chaos, I tend to really thrive in them. And so as you're beginning your preparation or finalizing your preparations, like here's a couple tips I would give you just to put yourself in the right mind.

And to give yourself the right framing and to maybe rescue yourself when things get a little hairy, because they will, things will get crazy things will get knots and that's okay. This is when operators are at our best when everything else is chaos. What's What's the quote where it says, if you can keep your mind when everyone else around you is losing theirs, you will be a man my son or something like that. The point is our team that's relying on us right now, to be stable, to be the rock to be the person that gives them their motivation and rescues them when they need it and provide sanity, and does all those things that we need to be doing. It's a really great time. So what are you doing to prepare for this? Here's just some very practical tips I'm gonna give you the first is that Wednesday before Thanksgiving, you need to treat lat like the day before vacation. So that's actually just interviewing someone for the show. Blaine Eckers, who that interview will air in a couple of weeks. He was talking about how the day before vacation is our most productive day of the year. It's the day when we add 20 everything when we suddenly learn how to delegate again, when we go into deep, intense focus modes. When we push aside things that can be pushed aside to later, when we're really good at saying no to the hardware from any of us to say, treat that Wednesday, like the day before vacation, get everything in a row.

Have your campaigns ready, have your ads running have everything going already. So all you have to do on Friday morning is either have it automated set to start. Are you hitting start. That's an example I used to do my segmentation of the email lists and put them in a wait sequence on Wednesday. Not on Friday morning, I didn't leave that to chance, because I wanted the first email to go out early. And I wasn't going to leave it to chance that I would sleep in or that I would wake up you know a little bit of the Thanksgiving hangover as we all have sometimes. So have things ready. That doesn't mean you can't call audibles during Black Friday, we would frequently do that if we saw one email work better than the other we would call an audible. But get everything you can done done. And push everything that doesn't need done yet. To the side. This is not the week where some of our normal, scheduled items in the team really, necessarily happen. So if you have certain departmental meetings that aren't of useless week, like guiding meetings or developmental meetings, maybe push those aside. Maybe say we don't need to do that this week. All of our effort and all of our energy is on the promotion. Because there's so much money to be made here.

So there's your first step, treat the day before like the day before vacation, and then go out on Thursday on that Thanksgiving Day when you're out with family, friends, whatever you do on Thanksgiving, I don't care. Take a breather, leave your phone off, put it at home, put it aside. Be off your devices for that 24 hour period of thanksgiving. Your customers can wait and give everyone else the day off I put up notifications on your, on your Facebook page or on your messenger bot or on your customer service portal, whatever you have, if you're running a membership site and you can do a mass notification, let everyone in your following know that you and the team will be off on Thanksgiving with your families. People will actually respect you for that. I think that the whole stores opening at six o'clock on Thanksgiving night, I get why they do it. But I also know it invokes a lot of negative feelings towards people, even though the stores are packed, the stores are packed. But it does stir up negative feelings towards people. And that's the last thing you need right now you don't need that negative Juju. So leave it aside and take the day off and give your team the day off and make it mandatory. Like you will not be on Slack that day. You know, it's one of the few times of the year where I would say hey, that whole you know, like wish people happy birthday say happy for the July like all those holiday things that we do on a team that you should do as a director of operations as the operator, take Thanksgiving off rather like for real, take it off and come back ready to rock and roll on Friday.

Now during the weekend itself, I recommend having items there to fuel you. I recommend meal prepping, having things available on hand. Having a steady dose of caffeine available if you don't normally drink energy drinks. It's kind of want to make the exception. But you need whatever you need to feel you during that time. And I just find having stuff prepared, it's just so much easier. It makes everything run smoother through the rest of the weekend, you're less likely to get fast food or to actually, like bring you down, it's gonna mess with your with your with your flow. So don't rely on fast food or Uber Eats during this time period. That's heavy food. You want light food that gives you energy, like food that gives you clarity, like food that keeps you moving. I'm kind of a sucker for having pre made salads, I have a little refrigerator here, I'll help my office. I'll have pre made salads I'll have you know the little microwave microwavable soups and ramen noodle bowls like all that kind of stuff that I can just grab and go. Grabbing Oh, grab and go grab and go. It could be peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, I don't care. The point is, it's your energy, food, whatever it is that will propel you through this time period, have that on hand and be ready to rock and roll it. All right.

The other thing I would say is have a rest plan and give yourself the permission to rest you are going to get tired. This is not hero time, where you need to push through 24 hours a day for four days, like I would not recommend that. But give yourself the permission to take a rest I put a little futon in my office. Matter of fact, I will take a nap at two o'clock in the afternoon. I have no shame about doing that. This is the time to do it. Give yourself those 1020 30 Well, 20 minute really at the minimum, but up to two hour rest period where you'll take a nap in the middle of the day. And you'll be rested for the evening because you're gonna have to, like you're gonna have to work nights during this time period. Let's accept that reality. You're gonna have to work nights, you're have deadlines, you're gonna have deals expiring, you need to be on hand when those deals do expire. To pull through those last people that might have questions might have inquiries, ways that you can pull through the sale in the last five minutes, you need to be there. So rest in between and communicate that you're resting to your team. let the team know Hey, guys, I'm gonna just lay down for a little bit. What are you doing? You're doing two things there. You're communicating what you're doing. Yay. so other people can watch the customer service desk or the ads or whatever, you know, someone else can take the phone for a little bit. But you're also showing your team a bit of vulnerability.

You're letting them know this is okay. Nothing speaks stronger than our actions. Nothing speaks louder than our actions and when we are demonstrating that to our team, we're communicating good things we're communicating good habits. And so do that. Take that break, take that rest and communicate all this to your family. Like if if they've never gone up Black Friday before you don't really know what to expect. Let them know. Hey guys got me nuts. See you later.

You know, something to be said about that. By communicating that, and then getting to the end of Cyber Monday, and taking Tuesday off, glorious, wonderful Tuesday after Black Friday, Cyber Monday, unless your deals expire on Tuesday, in its case, take Wednesday off. The point is, when it's all said and done, give yourself the day, because you're gonna be working a lot. But enjoy it. Know that this is the time period where the person who markets the most aggressively will win. I like to call Black Friday, Cyber Monday weekend as the weekend where you can market as hard as you'd like to and get away with it. If you don't normally email your customers every day doing a promotion, you should probably email them twice a day, one of the em on the PM. If that if you've suddenly have to go do some new emails here, see sequences, here's what I do, don't write a new email, just change the subject line and send the same darn email again in the afternoon that you're sending in the morning, or vice versa. Just change the subject line.

The point is people are not going to be opening emails like they normally are. They're going to be opening emails in batches. They're opening. They're checking their emails a couple of times during the day. Looking for those sales because everyone's looking, everyone's looking for sales right now. So be at the top of the inbox when they open it. Be there. And if you're worried about people unsubscribing like I've done the numbers, guys, I've done the numbers and I have sent well over 75 million emails in my career. People do not unsubscribe during this time period at the same frequency that they do other time periods. It's crazy. It's market as hard as you'd like to get away with it time period. So do that. But this is the time where we are rockstars and we are able to contribute our highest level and really take things to a new place. It's fun guys enjoy the journey. Enjoy the ride, Count yourself fortunate for being in this position to be able to do that. let your team know they're fortunate to be in the position to do this. And everyone's working for the Christmas bonus guys right now. I mean, the success of this weekend is going to help you determine any bonuses that you can give at the end of the year. So lean into that. communicate that with your team, let them know what's coming. Let them know why it's coming. And they're going to feed off your energy. They're gonna feed off your enthusiasm. And together as a team, you're gonna rock it. Alright, enjoy. Have fun, guys. And when you're done, I'll still be here ready to go. And we'll talk soon. Okay, before you bounce out here, I have a free strategy session available exclusively for my podcast audience. In this 30 minute phone call will unveil the immediate steps you can take to operationalize your business and put you back in the driver's seat. Just go to www dot Adam liette.com and click Start Here.


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