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Tampa, FL—Luxury jewelers across the United States are gearing up for fall’s annual whirlwind schedule of special events and trunk shows. Make the most of your special events with better preparation, says Terry Sisco, president of ExSellerate. Now is a great time to get started, he says, and here are two actions to do right now to raise the level of success of all your store’s fall special events:

Action Item #1: Reassign “Orphaned Customers”

Employee turnover happens. When it does, do all the customers that the terminated sales associate sold and was associated with in your point of sale system become “orphaned?” It’s always amazing how many high value, loyal clients are abandoned when this happens. Reassign these customers to existing sales team members. In addition to driving more sales, this will help eliminate customer fatigue, caused by contacting the same small group of preferred clients over and over for every event, until they say “enough!”

To Do Now:

1. Query the store’s client database to find all clients of former sales associates.
2. Print out the list and let your existing staff review it to see if they have a connection with any of the orphaned clients
3. Reassign those clients to existing team members, matching the client’s merchandise preference with the strengths of the sales associate.

Permanent Procedure Change: Make it a store policy that whenever a sales person leaves your employment, their clients are immediately reassigned to a new salesperson. This assures that a new team member becomes productive more quickly, or that their clients aren’t overlooked by existing team members.

Action Item #2: Require client email addresses on every repair “take-in”

Using email to communicate your events is a critical advertising element for a successful event. Unfortunately, fine jewelry salespeople can be reluctant to ask for customer email addresses. A non-invasive technique to increase the number of email addresses in your store’s database is to require that every repair taken in for service throughout the year include the customer’s email address. Then use those email addresses to send out a “Save the Date” email campaign for your special event.

To Do Now:

1. Have a store meeting to advise all associates that email addresses are now required on all repair job envelopes.
2. Monitor every envelope for two weeks to observe compliance. Remember, people don’t do what you expect. They do what you inspect!
3. Make certain that the email addresses are transferred into the customer’s profile in the store’s point-of-sale system.
4. Use this information for a “Save-the Date” email campaign to announce a fall event.

ExSellerate is now accepting reservations for Spring 2013 sessions, and a few dates are still available for a fall session. Click here or call (800) 298-4250.