- Periodic sales promotions give small businesses the best chance of boosting sales and profitability when they are carefully planned.
- Care must be taken to not use periodic sales promotions as a crutch when sales fall short of expectations.
- QuickBooks Online price rules give small businesses the opportunity to efficiently apply promotional pricing to products and services.
- Small business owners, who are concerned about what effects sale promotions might have on revenue, can use this information to lower uncertainty
Periodic sales promotions
Weekly/monthly/holiday sales, aka periodic sales promotions, are something we’re all familiar with. The “one day only sale!” The “Memorial Day sale!” The “semi-annual sale!” Or, the most famous, the “Black Friday sale!” are all examples.
Before we get too far into it, let’s split hairs on the terminology a bit. A periodic sales promotion shouldn’t be confused with a discount or a markdown. A discount is a reduction in price for a particular group of customers. A sales promotion, typically, would apply to all customers.
A markdown is a “permanent” lowering of the price of goods in order to incentivize purchase so that they can be removed from inventory. This would be done for items that are slow-moving (or not moving at all).
Periodic sales promotions are a means of reaching periodic sales goals
Periodic sales promotions can help complement the efforts of salespeople and advertising. Whether your business markets to consumers or other businesses, a periodic sale can stimulate buying on the part of your customers.
Periodic sales promotions should compel your customers to purchase immediately. So, the nature of your promotion will have to be such that it bridges your customers’ culture with your sales goals. For example, are you trying to get customers to switch from a competitor? Or, are you trying to penetrate a whole new market?
Don’t launch a periodic sales promotion without a plan. Consider how the promotion will impact your business at different volumes. Decide what products/services should be included. Consider your best-case and worst-case scenarios so that you are mentally prepared for whatever your customers throw at you.
The upside of periodic sales promotions
Dead and slow inventory takes up valuable space. Worse yet, it ties up valuable cash. If you have inventory that is turning over slowly, you might consider how you can work it into a periodic sales promotion in order to make room for inventory that will actually sell. Doing so would be preferable to getting pennies on the dollar by discounting.
I wouldn’t offer a sale that revolved solely around dead and slow inventory, however. That might be a dud. Perhaps you might consider marking down dead and slow inventory extra – beyond the normal terms of the promotion. An example for a car repair business – a 10% off sale on brake replacement for President’s Day, with slow-moving tires offered at 40% off. Take advantage of the increased traffic to get the most that you can for the dead and slow inventory.
A periodic sales promotion might incentivize people who wouldn’t buy otherwise. If the promotion only runs for a few days, the sense of urgency could be increased. People who may only have a vague idea of what your business is about could be compelled to “check you out” while the sale is going on. Furthermore, the first-timers, if they are excited about what they found, might tell others.
Since a periodic sales promotion will hopefully bring in a lot of new faces, it’s an opportunity to collect some basic information. Even just an email address or a like on Facebook. Knowing more about your customers in general and those that were lured by the sales promotion specifically will help you to meet their needs better.
The downside of periodic sales promotions
Even the least savvy business person knows that if you sell something for less, you’ll make less profit on it. Periodic sales promotions will result in lower margins. The hope is – to make up for that with increased volume (quantities).
But, if you are able to pull off a successful periodic sales promotion, be careful not to begin to rely upon them. The siren song of a boost in sales/gross profit might prove irresistible if future sales don’t reach the levels you hoped. If periodic sales promotions are part of your strategic planning, then great. Run with it. Just don’t start using them as a crutch if things aren’t going as well as hoped.
When a customer purchases something at a reduced price, you might not be able to get a read on their future purchasing behavior. That is, beyond the fact that they’ll buy “x” amount of something at “y” price.
We’ve all heard the old adage “price, service, quality…pick two” when it comes to offering a value proposition to customers. If your business aims to excel in service and quality, but begins to succumb to the temptation to lower prices to boost sales, then you might see yourself transformed into a low-price provider – at the expense of service or quality.
It always comes down to…planning
Again, at the risk of being redundant, it all comes down to planning. Give your periodic sales promotions the thought and planning they deserve. Don’t just “knee-jerk.” Working it into a plan will give it the best chance of being successful.
Every industry is different. Every small business within an industry is different. There is no “one size fits all” solution to planning for periodic sales promotions. Nevertheless, since this website is SpreadsheetsForBusiness.com, after all, I took a stab at it.
Download the periodic sales promotion planning tool.
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Upon email confirmation, the workbook will open in a new tab.
This is a very high-level workbook since it isn’t specifically made for any particular business/industry. Hopefully, however, it can give you a starting point for thoughtfully planning your own periodic sales promotion. Helping to ensure that it fits in with your strategic plan and helps your business reach its goals.
Periodic discounts in QBO
How to apply this knowledge in your accounting software, though? Well, here’s how you might go about it in QuickBooks Online.
We’ll look at periodic sales three different ways through the eyes of a restaurant:
- First, an across-the-board 10% discount for everything. We’ll call it an “anniversary sale.”
- Second, a 20% off of Mexican food and drinks promotion for Cinco de Mayo.
- Finally, a weekly 15% off promotion for select desserts.
If you haven’t, read my previous post on the particulars of QBO price rules (levels). What follows won’t necessarily go into as much detail.
I’ll be using the sample company within QuickBooks Online Accountant. By default, this sample company is a landscaping business. For the purposes of these examples, I’ll make some changes to make the examples better reflect a restaurant business. But, if you see some odd things related to landscaping pop up in the screenshots or the video – that’s why.
In the previous example, we created a “dummy” price rule that provided no discount. We did this so that the price rule would not be applied by default during a sales transaction. However, in this example, for our restaurant, we want it to be automatically applied so that we don’t forget to give it to our customers. So, in this case, we’ll forego the creation of a “no discount” price rule.
Anniversary promotion
The across-the-board 10% discount is easy to set up. In the price rules screen, we’ll create a rule called Anniversary Sale. This rule will only be in effect over the weekend of April 27, 2019.
Since it is an across-the-board discount, All customers and All products and services will remain selected by default. A 10% decrease in price will be applied.
Simple.
Cinco de Mayo promotion
Next, we’ll look at the Cinco de Mayo promotion. In this case, it’s only our restaurant’s Mexican fare that’s on sale. Also, the sale only runs over the weekend – May 3, 2019, through May 5, 2019.
In this price rule, we selected the products in our Mexican subcategory. We then chose to decrease the price by 20%.
Weekly dessert promotion
Finally, we’ll tackle the restaurant’s weekly (Wednesday) discount on desserts, designed to get people in the seats during the slow mid-week time period.
This was approached in much the same manner as the Cinco de Mayo discount. Except, there is no Start date and no End date. This is an ongoing promotion. All products in the Desserts category were selected for inclusion and they were decreased in price by 15%.
Periodic sales promotions
When it comes to pros & cons, advantages & disadvantages, upside & downside posts, I always overlook a few. What are some of the pros and cons I missed for weekly/monthly/holiday sales promotions?
What other considerations need to be taken into account before a small business launches a weekly/monthly/holiday sales promotion?