At the end of the upcoming fiscal year, make a marketing plan for the next few weeks. Do they work? Well, look at any large retailer, these people have heaps of experience in this matter, what are they doing? Would they do all this advertising if it did not work?

If it works for them, why not you?

Take a look around your shop for some loss leaders to fuel the sale.

Need some ideas? Here is something that will take you a few seconds to give you these ideas.

Go to register reports > stock titled "Old Stock on hand by Date last received"

This will gives you a listing of your stock based on when you received it. Unfortunately, this stock is rarely doing you much good, and it often costs you to keep it.

Here are some ideas for you to season your EOFY sale.

1) What about making some of this into a bundle by putting some of these with something that does sell.

2) Make a bargain bin.

3) Use them as specials

Now put them out and put a sign on your shop.

Let me know how it goes. I doubt you will be sorry you try, but I am sure you will be sorry if you do not try it!

Everyone is trying to get some more retail sales. One of the most effective methods is tripwire marketing.

How to set up a tripwire marketing campaign?

What you are doing here is making a cheap item, a bargain for shoppers. The idea here is that people who do not know you. They have never experienced your products and services, so they do not buy from you.

They do not know you; so they do not buy from you. That is where the tripwire comes in.

What it is, is a cheap item that is low-risk that potential customers will buy. The purpose of tripwires is an introductory offer. 

Firstly you need to find such a product. A good way of starting is to look at your top-selling products. This is easy to do in our point-of-sale system.

Go to Register reports

Now select "Top N Stock Sales for a Given Period"

Now in the form put in last month.

Now a report comes out that looks like this with your top sellers listed.

Now a report comes out that looks like this with your top sellers listed.

Now see the sort of products here. 

This gives you an idea of what people will buy from you and at what a price.

Now see if you can find such a product. 

All you want from that product is a sale to build trust with the public to make the first sale. Then hopefully recurring purchases will follow.

Try it, good luck, and let me know how it went for you.

CRM is short for Customer Relationship Management.

You all have a CRM software written for retail that we supplied to you *FREE*.

Why not try it out?

Consider this if you go to a corporate and talk to their retail executives and experts there. What you will find is that these people know about retail. Often they have heaps of years in retail. Behind them are many experts that are giving them scientific information. They know retail. 

These people do not think its enough to have a shop and then wait for people to visit them. This is, unfortunately, is what so many SMB retailers do. What they feel is that people need to be enticed to come to their shops. So they look at how to give these people a reason to visit and shop with them. This can be expensive so what they need is a way of measuring how they are going. What they want is to make changes and then see how it goes. Then they want to know if these changes did or didn't work and also why. This is partly why they need CRM. 

Also, they want to build up loyal customers as it is said, "Good customers are as rare as latinum (Gold) - treasure them". A retail CRM system is required to find and build loyalty. A customer that comes regularly is worth much more to your business than the big buyer who comes once.

CRM today is the key to managing business communication in modern retail. 

Shops that had a CRM are doing much better during our COVID world than those who did not have one. I bet they will continue to do better in the POST-COVID world too.

Why not give it a try?

My post on the need of item sales information caused a lot of inquiries. 

-The problem is that besides sales, many people want to know the items that sell the most.

-The items that give the most profit, stock turns, etc., in a category, department, location, etc.

So go to Register reports > Stock> Top N Stock Sales for a Given Period.

Let us say you want to know, for this range, what sells the more by quantity, well it is easy to find out. Click "Select Top By" above and click "Units Sold". Retail experts call this the vote. They consider that the shoppers are when they buy they vote on that item. That is considered to be why people are coming into your shop. 

I think a more meaningful measure is the profit item below it. This shows the things that are producing money for you. 

A useful idea that works is to put near the best selling item, the most profitable items.

I do suggest that you try out these options above now and experiment with them.

This is the Last minute shopper, you know the person that decides to go shopping for Chinese New Year or Valentine's Day in the last few minutes in a mad rush. 

I've been there myself, thrown out of the house and told to come up with a suitable gift for the occasion. 

This is good news for savvy shop managers ready for this last-minute rush. Here are some tips.

1. Put a sign on the window, so this person knows you have something.

2. Create a featured area with items that are suitable and easy to find, displayed on a stand. 

If you are not sure what to offer on that day, see what sold well last year on that day; it will give you some ideas.

This is easy in our POS system.

Go to Register reports.

Now select "Top N Stock Sales for a Given Period".

Select the day. 

Outcomes a report with the top sellers for that day 

3. Offer clear gift alternatives, remember often this shopper has little idea of what to buy. 

4. Offer gift wrap

5. Have appropriate greeting cards on offer if possible.

Final note: Much of the stock is lost if you do not sell on the day, so consider doing deals.

Two marketing holidays are coming up, Chinese New Year on Friday, 12 February, and Valentine's Day on Sunday, 14 February. 

I hope you have something to offer for each of these holidays.

As you can see, public interest in both in Australia is high based on google searches. So there will be much there.

I am sure that Chinese New Year 2021 will be more important to retailers than in previous years. This is due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.  What people tell me is that Chinese New Year as a marketing holiday is growing longer. Many are reporting Chinese people buying now and expect it to continue after the holiday for a while.

Although many retail experts are not sure about Valentine's Day, as it was big last year but not so big the year before. Still, many are reluctant to go out to restaurants. They are not going on big trips so that they will need product.

What Google Trend shows is that people are looking for ideas.

Please make sure you have something.

Now is not the time to keep a “business as usual” approach. COVID-19 has changed the retail scene. Do not count on your experience. You need to look at the data. 

See what items are driving you the most traffic and profits into your shop. Once you know your money-makers, you can move them to prominent places. The current retail theory states that you should put good products in a few places. This is because, in the age of COVID-19, the stress is on giving more space for your high-demand items versus showing many items.

First, let us find your *MONEY EARNERS*. It will only take a second.

Go to register reports and select the top stock report as marked with the red arrow here.

For this do this by all the shop sales. 

Put in the past 30 days, then select 40. This will give you your top 40. 

Then you will get a report with all the figures.

Now put these items in a noticeable place. The more places, the better.

This method works, try it! 

In 2020, one point shown was nothing works to motivate customers to buy as effectively as VIP points.  So if you want to drum up business, pick a slow time and widely announce a period of double or triple points for customers. 

It is easy and quick to set up with our software. 

To get it running 

Go to the Main Menu> System Maintenance> System Setup 

Once the page is open, select the Loyalty tab.

See the value set for the Redemption value per point option. See circled in red.

When you run your happy hour, set this to a meaningful figure, at the end of the happy hour, put it back. 

Make it easy for people to join your VIP club, the more that join your club, the better for you. We find email addresses for identity works well. 

Correctly done VIP clubs are said to add about 2% value to a shop.

See how you go!

If you are dealing with giftware, you always need to select new products. These products come and go, and also you need to offer your customers new products all the time. Computers can help with the products with a sales history but are of little help here.

So what happened was I was talking to one of our clients about this. He has a gift shop, so we put together a checklist of ideas for selecting gift products. 

Here is what we came up with, and I hope it helps.

1) Good margins, a giftware shop, cannot survive on low margins.

2) The product has to stand out from the other items on the shelves. It needs to have something deserving of your customers' attention. 

3) How hard is it to handle?  For example, anything fragile is a problem, e.g., glass as many insurance policies will not cover it in the shop. 

4) What is the delivery? Last quarter's delivery was a real mess. People had no stock, and customers and the stock was in transit.

5) How easy is it to get more stock?

6) Does it fit into your shop now? Is it the type of product that your customers will buy from you? 

7) Does it live in your price points?

8) Are there any minimum orders required? 

9) Growth, can the product lead to something. A small mobile camera cases buy led one of my clients to introduce a whole new department in his shop.

10) Does it need specialist knowledge? If so, do you have that knowledge? If so, it is a big plus. If not, then will you get that knowledge soon?

11) How many people nearby handle it? This is one advantage of dealing with a supplier far away, as you may have a unique product.

12) Variations can be a problem. A product with five options, four colours blue, green, white, and red, and comes in three designs would be 60 different products.

13) Start small and grow. 

14) Above all, remember it is said, "to sell giftware, one needs a soul." Ask yourself, do you have that soul? If you think YES, then test yourself first on a few small oders.

Giftware is one product where *David can take on Goliath*.

Our new DTI system is a digital, paperless receipt. It is a much smarter, more attractive alternative to paper, PDF, or standard email receipts. This is because 80% of customers look at their digital receipt after purchasing. This gives the retailer a terrific marketing tool, a second chance to sell more. 

This video will give you some ideas on how retailers in the US are using it to connect to their customers.  

Best of all, it's free to you as you are our client!

Retail Express, had an interesting article that is worth looking into on page 12. In our POS Software, it is easy to try.

It is about rearranging products in the fridge into proper categories.  Doing this, they claim you can drive sales up an incredible amount. See the arrow marked in brown.

Click here for more details.

There is no reason why this theory should not work for any department. Try a department, then see what are your top sellers in that department. 

Go to register reports and select the top stock report as marked with the red arrow here.

You get this screen

Now select your department.

Here I used the stationery department. I put in 99 million in red for illustration. That is overkill - put in 100. I also selected a whole year as short periods can have significant fluctuations. We do not want to do this every week.

Now study the report to see your shop's strengths. See what do you sell. 

Now go to a major retailer's website and see how they categorize their department. Some like Amazon and the supermarkets have spent millions on this categorization, so they know something. Also, check out a few other shops. 

You now know the theory and your strengths, so layout your stock in a logical order.

Why not start now, pick a small department and see how you go?

Well, it's time to start planning for 2021, so you can use this list of holidays to help plan your 2021 marketing.

For a full list click here.

If you need an explanation of the holiday, click on the holiday link to get a description.

You can fine-tune it to your situation by using the filters.

Boxing Day is the biggest day on the Australian retail shopping calendar.  

I hope it is busy in your world.

Many of my clients in a typical year expect to do about half their yearly trade in this season. For these, it's a speed test of how fast our system can be under pressure. I am sure most will be impressed with the recent increase in our software's speed in our new software.

Nothing will connect with your customer at the right time better than SMS. 

Current figures are that over 98% of SMS messages are opened, and almost all within the first 3 minutes. Nothing else comes even close to these figures as far as efficiency or speed. What it means is that you can interact with your customer quickly and effectively.

What makes it particularly effective is that the message is delivered directly to your customer. Emails are often now protected by ISP spam and customer's filters. These often block your messages.

There is, of course, the higher cost, but you often get for what you pay.

If you have products that need an instant response, you may need it.

PS Another good idea in some industries is to send a thank you SMS automatically every time they buy.

This Friday it is "Black Friday", officially this is the start of the Christmas shopping season.

Last year's spending on Black Friday shot up 69 percent on the previous year.

Looking at the Google trends, it looks that public interest I about the same this year as last year.

I hope you are doing something.

If you are interested in upgrading your scanners let us know, we have a Black Friday sale too.

You could use an image like this in your POS Software, Staff would appreciate when searching for a stock item an image. 

However you need to promote your business. The fact is that the cheapest (it's free), most effective, quickest, and the best way today is online on Social Media. 

What about a picture of something interesting in your shop? Look at large companies. If you look at their Facebook pages, you will see much of it in pictures. 

Why?

Well, they know that they have a few seconds to grab a person's attention. Visually you can captivate someone very quickly. A picture can help that person to visualise the product and/or service offered immediately. If they like what they see, they may read the offer. What they want is an exciting image that will grab your attention. 

Social media today is an inherently visual medium.

So, where is this headed? You need to be active on social media to promote your business too!  Ideally, what you are doing is something on social media at least a few times a month. If once a week, you are looking at 50 images a year.  It does not have to be Earth-shaking images. Few of them we see are. Use a picture of a jigsaw puzzle that has just arrived in your shop,  a new dog for sale, a Christmas greeting card, some perfume, a book, etc. 

Often you can get professional images from your supplier. If not well, it does it have to be professionally made.  With a decent smartphone today, anyone can take a good picture. All you need is some basic photography skills.

A Tip: One advantage that an amateur photographer has is that they can take as many photos as they like whenever they like.  Professionals can only come at set times and rarely will go back. Use this advantage and take many pictures, up, down, around, left, right, etc. until you get it right. If none worked, try again, it cost nothing today to take heaps of photos.

Another tip: Check out a few youtubes on taking photographs with smartphones. For example, this guy explains it well. 

Knowing how to take a good photo today on a smartphone is a skill worth learning. 

Give it a shot, and I would like to see some of your examples.

If you want to sell gifts in your shop, you need to know how to tie a proper ribbon on a gift box. You want to look professional!

I remember my grandfather in his shop, teaching me. It took me quite a few attempts to get it right. Like so many things, it is easy to do once you get the hang of it. Note it would be best if you did it a few times as in retail you will need to be able to do it quick under pressure.

Your customers will often take it very seriously, so you need to do it right!

Here is a youtube that explains it very well a simple and good knot for you to start learning.

This is a common problem in retail having:

Slow stock does sell but only slowly.

Dead stock does not sell at all.

Both cost money to the retailers, costs cash flow, money and takes up space that should have stock that sells better.

Now in identifying your products that are slow or dead go to register reports > stock titled "Old Stock on hand by Date last received"

I tend to do it in two parts. I check the overall problem in the shop to see the scale of the problem. Then I go by department in detail as its people find it better to examine this way.

This gives you a listing of your stock based on when you received it. This stock is rarely doing you much good. As I stated, it costs you to keep it.

Now once you identified it, what are you going to do about it?

I would suggest firstly move it because maybe it was in the wrong area. Good clean and a nice presentation can do wonder.

If your decision is to minimise your losses on this stock by slashing the price and to move the stock here are some options.

1) Offload them on sites such as eBay.

2) Use it to make a bundle. Put an old stock item that does not sell with something that does sell and turn it into a bundle.

3) Make a bargain bin.

4) Use the stock for your loyalty marketing program.

5) Use them as specials when you have a marketing season.

Planning the layout of your store is quite an art. This video may give you some tips on how to improve your shop layout and design.

One point here is that Australians shoppers do move clockwise. That is why when we set sales budgets in our POS software, we make the left side of the shop more than the right side. If you are not doing this now, I suggest that you start now doing that now.

Near the front counter, the items with the highest return on investment should be there. It is easy to get a list of these go to

Cash register report > GMROI (see the selection highlighted) in your point of sale software in the reports here.

Ignore departments and see what they are. Now see how you can use them at the counter.

Say your supplier decided to make a marketing promotion and asked you to take part. Our client said yes. They went through quite a bit of trouble, and now they want to know how well the promotion did. They do not see much, yet the supplier does. So we are helping out.

The problem here is that no-one before it started thought to make any KPI. So what happened is that the operator adjusted the price with a discount. As there are a lot of discounts, it is hard to determine whether it was a promotion sale or not. Usually what we could do here is to try to determine what the usual amount of discounts are but now who knows what is typical.

What it shows is that it is crucial if you are promoting to make a KPI policy before starting.

Otherwise, it can be hard to determine whether the offer worked.