Start seasonal promotions a week or two ahead of schedule to counterbalance any dip in spending.

Example: Major retailers were stocking their shelves with Halloween candy a week prior to Labor Day this year, and back-to-school specials started during the final week of July.

Here are a few more examples of special pre-promotions top companies used to attract more prospects and maximize their end-of-year push, according to a recent report by The New York Times:

• Retailers like Home Depot, Kmart, J.C. Penney, Sears and Wal-Mart all started stocking Christmas items before the end of September!
• Starbucks got a jump on the cool weather by promoting the return
  of Pumpkin Spice lattes via a major advertising campaign that kicked off around Labor Day.
• The New York City Ballet began promoting its annual “Nutcracker” show well before Thanksgiving.

The lesson: If your company runs end-of-year promotions, get an early jump. Rolling out the special a couple weeks early doesn’t only motivate salespeople, it’ll also net more buyers.

On top of which, it gives you an edge on competitors, who’ll more than likely run their end-of-year specials according to schedule.

You may even want to tie the event to a sales contest, to give reps an
extra incentive to make the most of a limited-time offer.

Source: “Madison Avenue Says Ho! Ho! Halloween!” by Stuart Elliott, New York Times, 9/14/11.

That’s exactly what’s happening to suppliers that have Wal-Mart as a customer.

The retail giant is dragging its thousands of suppliers into yet another of its corporate initiatives. (A while back, the mega company wanted its suppliers to start “greening up” … or else!)

The target this time? Logistics, specifically deliveries.

New strategy, same story: You want to sell to us, you play it our way. Even if it jacks up your own costs. That’s Wal-Mart’s stance.

And there are implications for all organizations, no matter whom you sell to.

Wal-Mart’s newest plan to cut costs? To take control of all deliveries themselves, relying on its own trucks and more private contractors. The move is expected to improve the company’s delivery rates, transport supplies more efficiently and even let them better negotiate fuel prices. But are there benefits to their just-alerted suppliers? Not so much.

OK, maybe you don’t have many (or any) Wal-Marts in your database. That doesn’t mean your organization may not experience a similar phenomenon. And soon.

As companies of all sizes continue to seek out ways to cut costs, they’re forced to look farther afield to do it. And they may be looking to enlist their suppliers in that quest.

Why not beat them to the punch? Start brainstorming ways that both you and your major customers can control expenses and think about approaching them with your ideas.

Everybody saves, you show customers you’re looking out for them and you call the shots!

Adapted in part from “Wal-Mart Asks Suppliers to Cede Control of Deliveries,” APICS e-News, Vol. 10, No. 11.

It’s Wal-Mart.

The huge retailer plans to tag every product it sells with a label that tells buyers how green the item really is.

And Wal-Mart plans to pass along the cost to its 100,000 suppliers.

Wal-Mart’s Green Business Summit, Feb. 10 in Vancouver, British Columbia, aims to “accelerate change towards sustainability.”

Wal-Mart is reacting to its customers who want various green information about the products they buy, such as:

• packaging materials
• energy used in production
• transportation emissions and fuel usage, and
• raw materials.

Just how much green information can you fit on a small consumer item? Soon, all buyers will need is a bar code and a smart phone.

The technology already exists to develop a smart phone app that will allow consumers to use a package’s bar code to access green information.

How do companies prepare? With demands like those coming from Wal-Mart, companies will have to track their environmental footprints and then tout any reduction in greenhouse gas emissions or energy usage and explain how that makes the company greener.

While Amazon has continued to enjoy consistent double-digit growth throughout the recession, it’s fair to say the popular e-retailer’s holiday receipts exceeded all expectations.

Amazon continues to not only maintain, but increase, its already-considerable market share, thanks to a number of shrewd, and often unconventional, selling strategies. Among them:

• Strategic discounts: Amazon’s holiday sales benefitted tremendously from a pricing war with Wal-mart that began in early November. The battle resulted in both companies dramatically slashing prices on some of the season’s most popular items. But Amazon came out ahead of the curve, as consumers who were attracted to the site by one highly-discounted item kept shopping and purchased several other items at regular price.
• Streamlined check-out: A lot of companies use the online checkout process as a way to gain as much info about customers as possible. The reality is that approach costs companies a ton of customers. Research shows the more steps involved in the checkout process (or info customers are asked to provide), the less chance there is customers will complete the process. Amazon simplified its process so new buyers only have to provide the absolute essentials — and repeat buyers aren’t asked to provide the same info more than once.
• Free shipping: Shipping costs (especially excessive ones) are the bane of online buyers’ existence. While they enjoy the convenience of shopping from their living rooms, excess shipping is enough to make them hold off and simply pick up the item(s) they want next time they’re out. Amazon eliminated that obstacle by waiving shipping on many of its items. And while a lot of companies don’t have the freedom to offer free shipping, it may be just as valuable to increase volume per sale by offering reduced shipping rates on bundled items or high-volume purchases.
• Product suggestions: More than 70% of Amazon’s profits were due to product suggestions last year (i.e., the site — or other consumers — suggesting items based on past buying history or common interests, etc.). During the busy holiday season, when people are eager to find creative gift ideas, those suggestions translate into major revenue. It’s an online resource that almost any company can use to cross-sell or up-sell ancillary products.

What are some ways you can put these selling strategies to work at your company? Let us know in the Comments Box below.

Info: “Amazon’s Holiday Sales Buoyed Profit,” New York Times, 1/29/10

The price war started a month or so ago, when both Wal-Mart and Amazon began dropping prices on best-selling books and DVDs in an attempt to win buyers, rather than profits. But the price war soon expanded to other items including video games, mobile phones and other popular devices.

In some ways, the back and forth has gone from petty to absurd:

• Wal-Mart recently slashed a third of the sticker price off of Hasbro’s classic Easy-Bake Oven
• Amazon and Wal-Mart both offered the Xbox 360 gaming console, an extremely popular item this holiday season, for a bargain-basement price of $199 — complete with a $100 gift card
• Wal-Mart and Amazon both offered a $15 gift card with the purchase of “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2″ — the most popular video game of the holiday season, and
• Both companies are selling the Palm Pixi phone (an item that normally retails for more than $200) for approximately $30.

Obviously, neither company is profiting from sales of these items. In fact, they actually lost money on some of the best-selling items from this past holiday season. So the question is: Why employ a strategy like this, especially now, when a post-recession holiday season could provide a major boost in sales?

Answer: It’s a long-term strategy to win buyers — and eventual profits — in a shifting marketplace where a lot of customers now prefer shopping online to fighting traffic and crowds to shop in brick-and-mortar stores.

Online sales currently account for only 4% of the retail market, but that percentage is rising quickly, which has caused retail giants to scramble and determine whether to stake their company’s future in-store or online.

The current battle between Wal-Mart and Amazon is particularly compelling because it pits a consumer titan (Wal-Mart generated more than $400 billion in sales last year) against the emerging online contender (Amazon posted $20 billion in online sales last year), both of which cater to completely different buyers (Wal-Mart the average American shopper and Amazon, the edgy, urban-class buyer). It creates an old guard v. new guard matchup that has the potential to determine not only which company is built to last, but also the future of retail altogether.

Recession-proof businesses

While most retail chains are still feeling the ill effects of a consumer confidence hangover, Amazon’s sales were up 24% in the third quarter of 2009. Meanwhile, Wal-Mart’s direct merchandise sales were up 44%, which means both companies are basically recession proof right now.

But the issue at stake isn’t where consumers are spending now, but how — and where — they’ll be spending their money in the years to come.

Sure, Wal-Mart is still the team to beat … for now, but can the company maintain its momentum if its strategy remains dependent on low-to-no profit deals and in-store selling?

Who will ultimately win this pricing war, Amazon or Wal-Mart? Tell us what you think in the Comments Box below.

Source: “Price War Brews Between Amazon and Wal-Mart,” by Brad Stone and Stephanie Rosenbloom, New York Times, 11/24/09

attempt to upgrade from the Vista version installed on most of them.

Most of these laptops came loaded with Windows Vista Home Basic operating system, which doesn’t include a free upgrade to Windows 7 in the U.S.

The folks who shelled out about $300 for these machines will have to come up with an additional $120 to get Windows 7 and get rid of the much-maligned Vista.

Microsoft has also published its “upgrade” paths — the rules of the road for installing Windows 7.  The software company won’t support upgrade from:

• Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Millennium Edition, Windows XP, Windows Vista® RTM, Windows Vista Starter, Windows 7 M3, Windows 7 Beta, Windows 7 RC, or Windows 7 IDS
• Windows NT® Server 4.0, Windows 2000 Server, Windows Server® 2003, Windows Server 2008, or Windows Server 2008 R2

To download the full, four-page “Windows 7 Upgrade Path” document, visit here.

Christian Shea, principal of marketing agency www.P4MV.com, has — and he hears it repeated at every conference and networking event he attends.

“But here’s the thing,” he says, “I have yet to hear the name of a researcher or report related to those findings.”

So he decided to call every speaker’s bluff and do a little digging.

What the research says

The authors of a 2005 study, “Turning adversity into advantage: Does proactive marketing during a recession pay off?” found that actively marketing in a down economy does produce positive results.

However, they caution, this does not apply across the board.

Example: Consumer brands like Dell and Wal-Mart are so bound to marketing that big cuts would hurt their bottom line beyond the recession’s impact.

But b2b companies usually won’t feel the hit of a marketing reduction as badly, because typically, marketing is one of many components that generate revenue.

The most referenced study, one by McGraw-Hill about the 1981-1982 recession, concludes that b2b companies that increased marketing during the recession averaged much higher sales growth for the following three years than those that decreased marketing.

But all that’s really saying is that to maintain market share, it’s necessary to keep pace with what your competitors are doing.

What marketers can do

The battle cry therefore is: Become smarter with what you have.

If budget restraints are a factor, Shea’s research suggests, you should consider working with only the channels that you can continually improve as initial results are analyzed.

“If you can do only enough of a campaign to pull one round of data from each communication channel,” Shea says, “go with fewer channels that will have the greatest impact.”

Example: Wal-Mart faces a $7,000 OSHA fine after a crowd of 2,000 excited shoppers trampled a worker to death at a Long Island, NY, store on the day after Thanksgiving.

Does OSHA have a standard on retail crowd control? No, and it doesn’t need one.

It used its General Duty Clause (GDC) to issue the fine.

The GDC requires employers to maintain safe workplaces, free of recognized hazards that are likely to cause death or serious physical harm.

OSHA called holiday shoppers a recognized hazard, saying previous experiences with day-after-Thanksgiving crowds should have tipped off Wal-Mart managers about potential dangers.

Some other examples of the newly aggressive OSHA:

• 37 days into the Obama administration, OSHA proposed more than $1.2 million in penalties against G.S. Robbins & Co. of East St. Louis, MO. It used a new regulation that allows fines to be multiplied by the number of employees affected by a violation.
• In another speech, Barab said the agency would work harder to give workers the “tools” they need to ensure their workplaces are safe. That’s a reference to OSHA’s efforts to get workers to turn in their own companies for alleged safety violations.