Tips for Surviving the Holiday Selling Season

Five Things To Know This Week:

1) Avoiding Digital Scams
2) The Best Laptops for Your Small Business
3) Tips for Surviving the Holiday Selling Season
4) Exploring the Rural/Urban Divide in Small Business
5) Resource of the Week: Free Cash Flow Webinar

Hello SBE Newsletter Readers,

As you read this newsletter, there are 26 days (including four weekends) until Christmas. If your business relies heavily on sales during the holiday season, I have three suggestions:

1) Keep two eyes on cash flow, sales, and inventory for the next 26 days…and have a backup plan if anything starts to go off course.

2) Visit your website, as a customer, DAILY. Check it from your desktop, laptop, and phone. Click on every link to make sure it all works. Have your IT person on standby in the event he/she is needed. Every second counts (downtime or incorrect/broken links can cost you).

3) Remember that social media is a dialogue not a monologue. Follow your customers online. If they buy something from your store and then post it on a social media platform, like it, comment on it, and share it. More importantly, add a hashtag so that new and existing customers can click on it and see ALL the people posting items they bought from your store.

I hope the suggestions help. Make the most of the next 26 days and remember to enjoy each one of them.

Brian

Brian Moran, CEO
Small Business Edge
Brian Moran & Associates
brian@smallbusinessedge.com

Avoiding Digital Scams

Digital scams are everywhere—and during the holiday season, it’s critical that we be vigilant to protect our personal and business lives.

The spurt of e-commerce businesses started in the past few years has made those entrepreneurs particularly vulnerable to security breaches, data loss, and fraud.According to a recently released Biannual Threat Report from Visa, almost 75% of fraud and data breach cases investigated by its Global Risk team involved e-commerce merchant experiences.

Learn more about how to avoid fraud in Visa’s, Fraudulese: The Language of Fraud.

The Best Laptops for Your Small Business

The holiday shopping season is in full swing, and bargains galore are out there. You may have missed Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but those designations have given way to super sales all season long.

This is a great time to shop for your small business. If you’re in the market for a laptop, PC Mag offers a deep-dive guide so you can find the best laptop for you and your employees.

Learn more about the best laptops of 2022.

Tips for Surviving the Holiday Selling Season

A recent Capital One Business survey revealed that many small business owners might find it challenging to navigate the holiday season.

To help, they asked entrepreneurs John and Kendall Antonelli, owners of Antonelli’s Cheese Shop in Austin, to share some of their top tips. (You may recognize the Antonellis from their TV ads.)

The Capital One survey also showed that about 70% of small business owners say they’ve experienced at least some mental, physical, or emotional exhaustion caused by the stress of running their business in the past year.

If that sounds like you, the Antonellis advise business owners that “it’s okay to say no. We tell ourselves to ‘make hay while the sun is shining’ and skip all the extra activities and events during the holidays that we would typically say ‘yes’ to. It’s also a good time of year to recommit to personal endeavors such as regular exercise, maintaining a healthy sleep schedule, and staying hydrated.”

Read more tips from the Antonellis.

Exploring the Rural/Urban Divide in Small Business

As we all well know, not all small businesses are the same. And one of the biggest differences seems to be between entrepreneurs located in urban and rural areas.

According to a new report from SCORE, rural business owners report higher expenses and fewer customers than their non-rural counterparts. In particular:

Rising fuel costs (49.3%), slowing customer spending (48.6%), tight marketing budgets (47.6%), and a limited local customer base (34.6%) are their most vexing customer-related challenges.
Rural entrepreneurs are twice as likely as non-rural entrepreneurs (19.2% vs. 9%) to cite the lack of broadband/high-speed internet access as a technology challenge.

Small businesses in both rural and non-rural areas say a lack of technological knowledge or assistance is particularly challenging.

Learn more in SCORE’s Megaphone of Main Street: The Small Business Rural/Urban Divide report.

Resource of the Week: Free Cash Flow Webinar

At some point, most small business owners struggle with cash flow issues. If you’re one of them, I hope you’ll join me Thursday, December 8^th at 2 pm ET and 11 am PT for a free webinar, How to Effectively Manage Cash Flow in 2023, sponsored by Zoho.

Learn more about managing your cash flow.