I love spring! The warm days, sunshine, fresh flowersit's a welcome relief from colder, shorter, wetter winter months. Plus, it's a built-in great opportunity for a sales promotion! From March 21 - June 20, you can run a promotion targeted at both existing and new customers. There's never a bad time for a great sales promotion and spring is real-made for such an event.

There are two broad elements of a good promotion to remain mindful of: time and reward. Time limit your promotions to create an urgency to act and include a reward to benefit those that act within the time you offer. For example, you can offer a spring promotion whereby a new customer gets a discount or a premium added to their order if placed between March 21 and June 20. I prefer to offer a reward as opposed to giving discounts. Rewards preserve the value of your product or service and don't set a precedent of a lower price for an established offering.

Get creative with the rewards you offer as purchase incentives. What I do is take the value of the discount I'm comfortable giving and use that as a budget for the premium I offer. For example, if you are in the business of selling outdoor gear, you could run a spring promotion to sell kayaks. Let's say the average price of the kayaks you sell are $1000 and you're comfortable discounting the kayaks 20%. You could take $200 and apply it to premiums to reward purchases within your promotion period. You could include paddles and helmet, pay for kayaking lessons, include a river pass, partner with a travel agency to discount a kayaking vacation, include monthly subscriptions to outdoor magazines, pay for entry fees to a local event, etc. The possibilities are endless! This concept can be used for any product or service, it doesn't make any difference if you're selling kayaks for $1000 or telecom equipment and services for $1M.

Promotions certainly aren't limited to seasons, any occasion can be made a promotion - anniversary, goofy holiday, birthday, business eventyou name it. System Administrator Appreciation Day can be a promotion event. Again, the possibilities are endless!

Pull out your customer and prospect lists, package an offering with a premium to reward action, announce the promotion with a press release, direct mail, web-site, email campaigns, etc. Get enthused and celebrate! Let your imagination run wild!

I love spring!