marketingGo Seasonal with Snacks
There are a string of mini selling dates coming up including Easter, prom season, communions and graduation. That makes it prudent to add a calendar of events to your site. But to ensure you get people in the door, “offer seasonal snacks, for example, chocolate Easter eggs and tiny Mother’s Day pastries to match the month or birthstone, diamond-shaped cookies for April,” recommends Stacey Horcher of J. Reiss in Lincolnwood, IL.
PRODUCTIVITYAlternate Between Fun and Ugh
If you have items on your to-do list that never seem to get addressed, Oliver Burkeman of The Guardian recommends this hack: “Spend an hour or two alternating between the most and least enticing items on your list, then the next most and least enticing, and so on, each time sugaring the pill of an important task with a pleasant one.”
MARKETINGEngage Brides-to-Be
The average period of engagement in America is 13.6 months, according to TheKnot.com, which explains why winter is the most popular time to get engaged, but summer is the most popular time to get married. Use this knowledge to your advantage. “Every bride wants to make sure on her special day her ring is sparkly and perfect,” says Megan Crabtree of Crabtree Consulting. “Run a report for clients who purchased their engagement rings from May to July of the last calendar year. Have your sales team reach out to these clients to make sure they visit for a complimentary ring cleaning before their big day.”
MARKETINGTake Care of Local Moms
Partner with your local hospital and donate jewelry to new moms with babies in the ICU. This is a scary time for them to be spending their Mother’s Day in the hospital, so anything you can do to make their day better will be remembered, says Kathleen Cutler of Kathleen Cutler Strategy.
MANAGEMENTMake Your Store a Hangout
By the end of his four-decade-long career at GE, Jack Welch, the man Fortune magazine dubbed Manager of the Century, reckons he got hiring right about three-fourths of the time. He said the secret to what he called the hardest thing a manager does is, “You have to create that ‘cool kids’ basement feeling that makes everyone want to come over and hang out at your place.” And the key to that was employee engagement, which involves showering your best employees with love and trying to bring the best out of them, he said.
operationsA Dime a Diamond
Never throw out a diamond again. Frank Cafaro of Frank Cafaro Vintage Jewelry & Repair in Belleview, FL, passed on this nifty tip from an old-time jeweler: Include a dime in every plastic Ziploc bag carrying a diamond. “Son, when I was a young man, I threw away more diamonds than I care to think about because they were alone in a plastic bag. So now I know if there’s a dime in the bag, there’s a diamond,” the veteran jeweler told Cafaro.