The holiday season spells of discounts and promos for all sorts of commodities including toys. Now that grown-ups are busy noting down the gender and age of their favourite nieces and nephews, your toy store is the perfect aid. Help adults pick the right toys for the kids by setting up your own “Best Toys List” this Christmas.

Best toys: Another useful tool for the sales tool box

Do best toys list help sell toys? Nancy Stanek, the owner of the Toys Etcetera stores in Chicago and Evanston, III pointed out that, “Best toy lists can be very useful sales tool for speciality retailers”. So if you are running a diecast airplane toys store, this list will guide shoppers in picking the best items. Nancy says that, “A good percentage of our shoppers walk through our door because they know they can get reliable , knowledgeable help in choosing toys – something they won’t find at big box stores. So they are willing to hear suggestions, and if the toy has the so-called endorsement effect of appearing on a list, it’s much easier to close the sale.”

In a year when all toy retailers need to deploy all the traffic-generating, revenue-enhancing strategies they have available, be sure to add the appropriate “best toys” lists to your store’s “best tools” list for the upcoming holiday season. The season is about selling, and whatever best toys list you use, watch it liven up your sales pitch, build your staff’s confidence, and rev up sales.

Tips in using Best Toys List to support the Holiday sales:

• Focus on a list or two that best fits your store’s positioning in your local marketplace. The Toy of the Year awards, a program of the Toy Industry Association, and Family Fun’s Top Ten Toys, for example, feature primarily mass market toys made by large manufacturers. This type of “best list” is largely irrelevant for a small independent store, points out Stanek. More appropriate is a list that features specialty toys exclusively, like the Actionjetz’ Best Airplane Toys for Kids list. “Independent retailers tend to eschew all the electronic gizmo razzmatazz that you find in many mass market toys,” says Stanek. “We’re more interested in what the child can do than in what the toy can do, and we need a list that reflects that.”

• Showcase the toys on the list in a special display. Draw attention to the “best toys” by creating a special display that shoppers can identify quickly. If shoppers have heard about the list through your advertising, on your website, in newspaper articles, or through Mommy blogs, make it easy and obvious for them to find what they came for. Designing an attractive banner of airplane toy models is truly enticing to the young boys, plus a big help for parents in choosing gift toys.

• Use your “best toys” display as an active sales tool. Organize your “best toys” area so it gives shoppers a framework for thinking about what they want in a toy. Consider signage that introduces the concept of different types of play and a “balanced toy box”—one that promotes learning through play in all major developmental areas (cognitive and language, imaginative, social and emotional, physical, and fine motor). Label the types of toys in a way that mirrors the organization of the store as a whole, so shoppers easily can find other toys in the same category. Organize according to war planes, to freight-used diecast airplanes, etc.  Use the display to start conversations with undecided shoppers.

• Urge seasonal staff to master the toys on your “best list” first—and thoroughly. The “best toys” are a great base for building the confidence of your less experienced, temporary staff. It gives them an easy way to approach customers or to answer questions authoritatively. All staff can always feel good about recommending a “best toys” product.

• Tell customers why you prefer this “best toys” list over others—whether they ask or not. Specialty retailers are experts. It’s a big part of your competitive positioning. Your customers have been reading about “best toys” lists in parenting magazines, online, and anywhere else they get parenting information. Assume they know about all the other lists. You are the person in your community who knows probably more about toys than anyone else, so share your expertise and state succinctly why you prefer the list or lists you feature in your store.  Watch kids play in your store six or seven days a week before you choose the toys. Talk with mothers and fathers and grandparents and teachers six or seven days a week. Show you care about kids and about toys with high play values. Use this list because it’s the most in touch with real kids and real families, and it’s the most national.”

• Make “best toys” available for kids to play with. Nothing sells a toy like seeing a child fall in love with it. “If you’re using best toys list, these toys have proved to be engaging for kids in stores around the country or they wouldn’t be on the list,” Stanek says. “Chances are they will attract kids in your store, too. So put them out and let them sell themselves.”

• Do some local publicity about the list to help draw attention and traffic to your store. Reporters are always looking for good stories, and the holidays are no different. Stories about toys have a special appeal during the holiday season, and the “top tips” and “best lists” genre is always in style. As a toy expert—and perhaps the person in the community with the most expertise about toys—reach out to local journalists who cover family, entertainment, lifestyle, or educational issues. Offer to help the reporter walk through your “best toys” and why each is considered a great toy. You’ll get a mention of your store, positioning of yourself as a local toy expert, and traffic to the store to see the toys. Actionjetz provides a template press release about its Best Toys for Kids list to its member retailers every year and other organizations may have something similar available about their lists.

• Don’t forget to put the list on your website and in your newsletter! Whatever you are doing to reach out to your customer base this holiday season, suggests Stanek, include your “best airplane toys” list. Busy as you are during the season, it’s a quick and easy way to get concrete suggestions out there to your customers and prospects—and hopefully entice them into the store.

Actionjetz Diecast Airplane Toys are miniature diecast airplanes fir for kids. Each toy jet comes with a secret code card that serves as the kids’ access to the fun and educational online virtual world of Actionjetz.

Article source: Playthings.com