10 Ways Your POS Can Help You Increase Your Retail Sales
There are a lot of ways you can increase your retail sales, but some of the most effective tactics involve using your POS.
How to increase sales in retail stores:
When you think of a point-of-sale or any payment solution, you probably think of credit cards, debit cards, and cashing out your customers, but a POS can provide your business with many ways to maximize sales in retail.
Below we'll cover the following ways you can use your POS devices, like smart terminals, to improve retail sales performance:
- Understand which products you need to stock up on
- Make it easier for customers to find a product exclusively available at one location
- Gain insights to make your sales and promotions as profitable as possible
- Gather customer feedback
- Get an advantage over your competitors
Many business owners dismiss POS systems because they're worried about the expenses. However, some POS solutions are relatively inexpensive and comparable in cost to a debit card machine.
If you’re looking for a POS device or you’re ready to upgrade your terminal, consider investing in a smart terminal, like Poynt (or its pocket-sized little brother, the Poynt 5).
Smart payment terminals have built-in tools designed to drive growth and can actually save you both time and money and help you to scale your business.
1. Anticipate inventory needs:
A smart terminal can give you pretty nifty insights into your sales. It can tell you about which products are selling, what time of day or season is busiest, and help you anticipate your changing inventory needs.
This is particularly important during the holidays when you need to pre-order inventory and meet your customers’ product expectations. If you can’t anticipate their needs and have adequate stock on hand, chances are another shop will.
2. Understand which products aren’t earning their keep (and evict them from the shelf).
One of the key ways to maximize sales in retail stores is to understand which products are duds. Did you think a super trendy gadget would sell out? But in reality, maybe it’s taking up valuable shelf space, being repeatedly discounted, and cutting into your margins?
With better product insights, you won’t make that mistake again because you’ll understand what your customers really crave.
3. If it’s out of stock, can you get it at another location?
A smart terminal can manage your inventory across locations. This means if you don’t have the product at one location, you can easily check its availability at your other locations.
This in turn will help to improve retail sales performance because even if you don't have the product at one locations, you can still make the sale and ship it to your customer or hold it for them to pick up later.
4. Know which promos are bringing in the most business.
Ever wonder which promos are actually bringing in more business? You can easily run different promotions for your store and check your real-time sales reports to find out what your customers are responding to and optimize your future promotions and sales.
Managing special promos is also easy because you can enter and save them into your payment solution. For example, maybe you offer 10% on Mondays, or $5 off if customers spend over $50 in-store, or BOGO on socks.
When you ring up a customer, Poynt knows when sale criteria have been met and automatically applies the correct promo so you don’t have to worry about missing a discount or unhappy customers.
Less stress, happier customers - sounds like a win to us.
5. Build brand loyalty and keep customers coming back:
How do you grow brand loyalty? How do you keep your customers returning to your shop? Offering exclusive incentives and customized offers based on a customer’s purchase history is a great way to achieve both these things.
Smart terminal apps like Poynt’s My Rewards app offers an easy way to set up and manage your loyalty program.
Want to learn more about building brand loyalty? Check out our post on the cost of acquiring new customers and how to build brand loyalty.
6. Get snapshots of your business performance wherever and whenever.
For those of you who have a hard time leaving your business in the capable hands of employees while you’re on vacation, this one’s for you.
You can view reports and real-time snapshots of your business and sales performance from anywhere (yes, even the beach). This means you can keep things running smoothly from a distance.
7. Get feedback to better serve your customers.
With receipt flexibility, your customers can choose to receive their receipt via email or text (or a traditional print receipt).
But, here’s the best part: if your customers opt to receive a digital receipt, they can easily provide feedback for your business by clicking the prompt in the receipt. You’ll see this feedback in real-time in your Poynt HQ app, where you can respond in the same email or text thread.
Feedback gives you an opportunity to better understand your customer’s needs and wants, implement changes to improve their future interactions, and resolve any negative experiences with your business. For example, if they had a poor in-store experience, you might offer them a special incentive to return. If not, you might lose them as a customer forever.
8. Give your customers a great payment experience.
Ever have a great experience at a store but the check-out experience is a nightmare (I’m looking at you, online shopping)? Maybe the payment terminal was slow or confusing, or maybe the machine didn’t accept tap or mobile pay. If paying is a pain, I’m not exactly eager to return even if I love the products.
The check-out is the final impression that you leave with your customers so you’ll want to make sure it’s a good one.
A smooth payment experience with a sleek and stylish payment terminal leaves a positive and polished impression of your brand.
9. Make the administrative stuff quick and simple.
If you’re a small business owner, you know your time is a hot commodity. With endless tasks and limited time, tools that make it easy to manage employees, shifts, accounting, and inventory are major life-savers.
Simplifying your daily operations leaves you more time to focus on your passion and building and marketing your business.
10. Finally, a reliable payments provider will keep you selling.
If you’ve ever had a bad experience with a payment solution or had a payment terminal malfunction, you know how much this can impact your sales (especially if it goes down on a Black Friday weekend). You’ll want to make sure you’re working with a company that provides excellent customer support. In the long-term, this is really important to increase your overall revenue.
Bottom line?
Payment solutions aren’t just payment solutions anymore. They’re sidekicks to make running a business easier, streamline your operations, and grow your brand.
Ready to grow your sales with a new POS? Find the right solution for your business.
