How can I grow my business profitabilty?
To acheive this result you need to either reduce costs or increase sales. Ultimately you will do both. What many retail stores do not realise is that having the right point of sale system (POS System) you can acheive both.
A good POS System simplifies and automates tasks. For example business owners spend countless hours working out what stock they need to purchase, where a good point of sale system that has re-order levels and quantities can enable staff to complete this task in seconds.
Managing the sale order process including stock requirements and dispatch processes is again all made efficient in a good POS system. All these and more drive down the cost of operating a business increasing profits.
From the other angle a good point of sale system enables better customer service through supporting accounts, customer information on purchase history and areas of interest. This enables the sales staff to use this information to better assist the customer and to also cross sell and upsell. This all helps to boost sales and increase profitability.
Another area that a point of sale system does is show related product items so that during the sales process it prompts the sales staff to ask if the customer would also like to purchase a related product. We have all heard countless times the prompt “Would you like fries with that?”. All retailers need a pos system that makes this cross sell simple and efficient to implement. The power of cross selling and upselling can easily add 10 to 20% to your sales figures without needing to spend a cent on advertising, as the customer is already in the store.
Targeted marketing is an approach to target your customer and helps you analyze your database and develop the approach and materials to reach your customers. Integrated marketing is having the tools to maximise the results from your marketing efforts. Not all point of sale systems includes these tools but ideally a good pos system would have integration with a online shopping cart and ecommerce systems, mass email sending tools, customer loyalty campaigns, gift card, laybys and selling prompts.
Questions to ponder
How good is your current point of sale system?
How do you grade it against some of the above criterea?
Is it time for a change?
Stop letting your pos system or cash register hold you back from growth
April 1, 2010 at 7:14 pm |
Thanks for these tips on retail marketing. From my personal experience in sales and marketing, a little preparation can go a long way. Just taking a little time to understand the ideal client and then qualifying can save hours of work and stress.