5 Way to ‘Weather the Storm’ – Boosting Sales in Bad Weather

Weather affects sales and revenues in nearly all retail and service based businesses. Great weather brings people out but poor weather will keep people at home indoors.

June-July has been challenging in the eastern part of Canada weather-wise. As a result, I’ve spoken to many business owners who are struggling with sales right now.

When discussing the weather with a few members of my team recently, I remembered a saying from my mother – “You can never control what other people do, you can only control how you react to it.” That made me think about the current weather conditions – “We can’t control Mother Nature, we can only control how we react to her.”

In that spirit, how can you turn something bad into something good? Here are 5 ideas we tossed around (and have used in the past with varying degrees of success):

1. Hold a sale if it’s raining at the time a sale is rung through the tills; 10% off, 20% off, more?
2. Have a rainy day gift – some small gift with each sale over a certain dollar amount.
3. “Rain Cheques”. Hand out coupons with every sale that says something like, “Rain Cheque. Because you braved the poor weather conditions today, we’re offering you 10% off your purchase the next time you visit our store”.
4. How about a valet service – park your customers cars for them, or at least walk them to their car using an umbrella.
5. My personal favourite – Why not do something completely off the wall and promote a product line that simply does not sell on rainy days at super prices? Fly in the face of the situation. One promotion we did was to sell ice cream (from the ice cream parlours operating in our garden centres) at ½ price on rainy days, when ice cream sales are typically deadly slow. Hey, it gets people into the store!

There are endless possibilities. It’s all about creating excitement in the store on days when you’re typically not busy.

Consider trying something to differentiate your business. If you do, make sure you:

• Promote it, everyday of the week
• Commit to having it, so people know to go to you for it.

Remember – You can’t control Mother Nature, you can only control how you react to it.

Let me know if you have any other clever ideas to ‘weather the storm’.

Andy