“You never want to wait until you're thirsty before you start digging your well”

2020 has been a year full of changes and challenges. With COVID-19, we’ve had to do a lot of adapting. As we start settling into new norms and get ready for a new year, we want to put some plans into action to make 2021 our most intentional yet!

1.) We're going to focus on bringing the most value to our customers!

Now that we’re past the COVID eCommerce boom, trends are heading towards value buying and away from luxury purchases.

To capture that trend, we’re turning our focus to upsell incentives. We’ve even built a new tool for our website to show customers how much they’ll save when they choose to bundle up.

Bonus: Not only will a bundle pass on more savings to our customers, but it will save time in our fulfillment process (win-win!)

In addition to offering more upsell bundles online, we’ve decided to test a relaunch of our curbside pickup program to bring back even greater savings with offers to stock-up on bulk products like 1/4s, halves & wholes.

Some consumers will always prefer the convenience of home delivery, there is still a group of folks who are willing to put in more effort to save. Our goal with is to capture both groups, which is why the new pickup program will focus on the stock-up product offering (which will not be available through home delivery).

2.) We're going to shore up our foundation!

In the startup days, everyone HAS to focus on building their customer-base & market strategy. But eventually, you have to shift your focus on building the 'business inside the business'. This includes things like building your team, processes, and culture.

With the growth many of us have seen as a result of COVID-19, this is an area to double-down on in 2021.

Here's what that looks like for us:

• Onboarding additional staff (promote from within when possible)
• Implementing lot-tracing & costing software to help manage growing inventory through-put
• Executing paid team training for key managers who now have a larger team to lead

3.) We're turning our attention to our loyal customers!

Since 2020 was a year of customer acquisition, we want to make 2021 the year of retention! If you saw an influx of new customers this year, you're probably already thinking of ideas to inspire those folks to continue to come back.

Smart move! However, we want to make sure that we also don't take any focus off of our existing best customers. Which is why we're:

• Sent Christmas care-packages to our top 25 customers
• Planning annual reviews with our top wholesale clients, to see if there's opportunity to serve them better
• Resurrecting our 'Refer-A-Friend' program to create & reward our top customer evangelist.

Conclusion:

It's this time of year we're reminded of the famous quote that says "If you fail to plan, you plan to fail". While your plan for 2021 will likely need to look different from ours, we hope some of the topics in today's episode inspire some creative thinking as you move forward into the new year!

Resources:

• Learn more about the new feature we built to highlight Product Upsells!
• If you're using GrazeCart, you can learn more about the 'Customer Referral' feature in your customer settings.
• The first team-training event we're executing is a review of John Maxell's, 5-Levels of Leadership book.