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December 29, 2020
POS Essentials
How do you make solid business plans in times of uncertainty? Because no one has a crystal ball to predict the future, focus on what you can control in terms of sustaining your business and meeting goals, both short and long-term. Prepare for multiple outcomes with strategies built around your customers, employees, and business insights. An advanced point of sale (POS) can help you do all of this and more. Below, we’ve outlined some actionable steps you can take to chart a deliberate course through uncertain times.
One aspect of business where you have total command is how and when you communicate with customers. With Exatouch® POS, the customer management feature enables you to see purchase histories, email special offers, and more. Make a plan to reach out to your customer list at least once a month with personalized emails. You can even use the reports available in Exatouch to determine your best-selling products, then email customers popular add-ons and sweeten the deal with a promotional offer for your most loyal shoppers.
In addition to providing the right products to customers, be sure you’re accepting the types of payments they want to use. Exatouch, ProCharge®, and other business-building solutions enable your establishment to process contactless, EMV, and mobile payments. Contactless transactions reduce the need for staff to touch customers’ cards increasing not only security, but hygiene. EMV payments greatly reduce chargebacks and fraud, keeping more money in your business. Payment technology is always changing, so setting your business up with the tools needed to retain shoppers is a great way to make your business plan future-proof.
Getting your team involved in supporting the business through uncertainty creates a win-win situation. Offer incentives as motivation when business may be slower. Run a contest to see which staff member can get the most customer email addresses or achieve the highest sales in a 2-week period and reward the winners. Exatouch offers a robust employee management feature that includes scheduling and tracking sales by staff member. This way, it’s simple to determine contest winners and you can confirm your top performers are scheduled to work during your busiest times to maximize sales.
Allocate resources to improve and standardize procedures so you and your team are better positioned to handle whatever comes your way. Exatouch simplifies the comparison of employee performance data so you can assess training needs. If Employee A voids three times the amount of transactions or offers more discounts than Employees B and C across similar shifts, that could indicate Employee A needs additional guidance. Outline common situations that warrant a void with your staff, show your team how to put a transaction on hold in Exatouch, and build custom promotions right into the point of sale to ensure consistency. Hold mini training sessions with newer or lower performing team members and rely on reports to help you track their improvements. Keep them informed of progress using concrete numbers from your POS reports—and celebrate their gains! When the outlook for your business is ambiguous, one of the smartest things you can do is arm your staff with knowledge and coalesce the team around shared quality and service goals.
When everything around you is in flux, pull reports to keep your finger on the pulse of business. Do most of your sales occur just before closing? Consider adjusting your hours to stay open later to accommodate a greater number of shoppers. With inventory insights, you may determine your store moves much more of one item than another. Create space on the shelf for additional brands of top selling products, while removing inventory items that don’t sell. Dig further into the inventory reports available in Exatouch and see which sizes, colors, or types of items sell the most. There’s no need to stock small, medium, and jumbo sizes of any product if only the small size sells. When the future is uncertain, remaining flexible is the key to survival. With detailed business reports, you have the information needed to make decisions quickly right at your fingertips. Exatouch makes it easy to email business overview reports daily or weekly to yourself, your business partners—and even your accountant. Whether you’re revaluating your inventory mix, your store’s hours, or everything in between, assess sales reports weekly and compare results monthly to ensure you’re flexing to meet customer demands.
In uncertain times, you need a business plan in place to weather ups and downs. Your POS can help you glean insights to make more informed decisions and put strategies in place to prepare for a multitude of outcomes.
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