Part VI:Planning Promotions 

For 2006, I’d like to suggest that, instead of looking at each promotion you present as a single, stand-alone event, you view that one event as part of a larger six-month plan for your business. Also, it’s important to understand how each one of those promotions fits into the overall big picture of your marketing scheme.
    Mapping a six-month strategy allows you to see how individual promotions fit together to influence positively the sales on a given day of the week. What I’m suggesting is that you not only look at the calendar horizontally, Monday through Sunday, but also vertically, down through each day for 26 weeks.

Formula
    Begin with a weekday that you identify as having potential to increase sales. For this exercise, let’s pick Wednesday. Establish a beginning goal. Let’s assume for this exercise, that during the past three months, sales have been averaging $1,000 every Wednesday.
    Take the Wednesday sales for the preceding 12-week period, total them and divide by 12. In the budgeting process, you establish a sales goal for each Wednesday beginning with Week One on January 4. Based upon the information above, let’s assume that goal was $1,000 a week.
    From there, you might want to set two simple goals:
    1. Double sales on Wednesday from $1,000 to $2,000 in 11 weeks (increase sales a conservative $100 each Wednesday compared to the previous week).
    2. Maintain that $2,000 a week from week 12 level through June 28.
    The fun part of this exercise is when you compute the additional sales over the $1,000 you were averaging prior to January 4. Here’s a quick look at how Wednesday sales results would look for just part of the 26-week period, beginning on January 4 and running through June 28:

    Between January 4 and March 15, you can produce an additional $5,500 in sales! That’s a 55 percent increase over trend for Wednesdays in just 11 weeks!
    Add another $1,000 a week for the next 15 weeks for a total of $21,500 in additional revenue just from just one day, Wednesday, in a six-months timeframe. This systematic approach to building sales can produce amazing results if you plan in detail and cover all the bases. You can see the sales potential if you zero in on just one or two days. Then, with the right planning and preparation, you can make it happen.
    The key here is to be organized with a game plan. Produce a meaningful promotion for each Wednesday for 26 weeks. Some might be stand-alone; some might be ongoing or sustaining promos that cover four to six weeks, such as a bikini contest.

Remember This 
     Promotions are like little mini-stage productions: They need to be planned, budgeted, cast, rehearsed and directed. Just like in professional sports, each member of your team needs to know what his/her role is and what’s expected of him. Ultimately, it’s your team and your employees who make the events succeed and make cash register ring. NCB

Editor’s Note: The above information is excerpted from “101 Ways To Make The Cash Register Ring!” by Ray Ford. Ford is a 30-year hospitality industry veteran and was one of the creators of the legendary Bobby McGee’s food/dance chain. Ray was a club DJ, corporate DJ program director, a corporate trainer for 10 years and ultimately vice president of marketing and entertainment responsible for all of the company’s 16-unit beverage sales. As a top industry consultant, Ford has worked for the who’s who of the industry on more than 100 projects. He has helped clients to build, open and operate more than 50 concepts in hotels, restaurants, bars and nightclubs.

A founding member of the Nightclub & Bar Advisory Board, Ray will be conducting a dynamic learning workshop, “The Top 20 Management Success Keys,” at “The Show” in Las Vegas March 5-8. Visit nightclub.com for more information about “The Show.”