WEEK 1June 5-10
SALES FLOOR It’s warming up outside and your staff’s thoughts are likely turning to their annual summer vacation. Set an ambitious store goal for Father’s Day (June 18) with the promise of an extra day’s paid leave for everyone in August if the team achieves the goal.
MARKETING While you’re focused on Dad’s Day, tweak your social media schedule to give prominence to men’s sunglasses.
INVENTORY Don’t leave any new goods ordered at a recent trade show sitting in storage. Get everything priced and on your boards within a day of it arriving.
TECHNOLOGY It’s time for some computer housecleaning. Get that desktop down to no more than a dozen folders or shortcuts. Set up new filters to take care of any new newsletters you may have signed up for in the last year or so.
WEEK 2June 12-17
INSURANCE One of the first questions an insurer will ask in the wake of a loss is: “Do you have an up-to-date inventory accounting?” Get on top of your records this week.
DEVELOPMENT Write a letter to someone you admire. Whether in the short term or the long term, it could result in a valuable new relationship … Or it might just be a way of making a person who inspires you feel good. Either way, you win.
MARKETING Bright blue skies, fresh green fields, trees and flowers in abundance … summer is beckoning and many people are looking to add some more color to their lives. Offer a free in-office trial of color contact lenses.
WEEK 3June 19-24
STORE If you take a few days off or have just returned from the weekend, do a sensory audit of your store. Take a big lungful of air. Does it smell clean? Full of spring? If not, get the carpet cleaners in, scrub the bathroom, and service the AC.
MANAGEMENT A risk management plan involves more than getting affordable rates for insurance premiums. In the long run, avoiding potential claims, say via a healthy workforce, is the single biggest step to keeping your risks (and costs) down. The Small Business Administration has a helpful guide to minimize risk. Find it here at invmag.us/051710 and create your action plan.
CUSTOMER SERVICE Work on your systems. Write scripts for greeting customers, what to show them, handling repairs, and responding to vision queries. These guidelines will be useful when bringing on new employees, making “getting up to speed” much easier than it would be otherwise.
WEEK 4June 26-July1
MARKETING Stretch your search for niche markets in your community. What about ortho-K for student athletes so they don’t have to worry about glasses or contact lenses during games?
MANAGEMENT There’s a good chance you were exposed to some great ideas at a trade event in the last few months. Draw up a plan to implement the best of those suggestions before another year passes and you’re again sitting in a trade session thinking, “I should do that.”
This article originally appeared in the May 2017 edition of INVISION.