Point of Sale Software

Here are some Articles from the Blog Subject - marketing -

Stock for promotions

POS SOFTWARE

An idea that works well is rather than massively discount slow-selling stock to get rid of it, is to use the slow-moving stock as a promotional item. What you do is take a good selling item, add an unsatisfactory selling item to make a package and sell it as a package. For a little extra, the person can get both things. 

 

As a large percentage of the Christmas trade is yet to take place, and right now people are looking for bargains, so why not try this idea.

Now the first point is to identify these slow-selling items. 

So go to Register reports > Stock > Slow moving Stock lines

 

Now I put in a year of sales, and I say anything that I have stock in and have sales of less than $100. 

I find it best to work by the department separately because you want some consistency with your offer. 

So in this shop, I went looking at the stationery department.

Now we got a big report of detailed information of all the items that we considered here a slow-moving. It totalled almost $80,000 worth of worthless stock. 

So we have someplace to start.

We now have a list of goods that we can use for promotion. 

Give it a try.

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Loyalty programs by country

POS SOFTWARE

Here is the KPMG’s November survey of 18,520 consumers from more than 20 countries which shows the use of Loyalty programs by country.

Australian are the most significant users of loyalty programs in the world, with 61% usage.

 

You can read the full report here

One point I did find particularly interesting is that 

"More than six out of ten Millennials say they prefer to donate their loyalty rewards to a good cause than redeem them personally vs. 40 percent of Baby Boomers."

In other words, about half the population are happy to use the loyalty program if you were to donate their proceeds to charity. This may be an answer to the problem of getting people that only use your goods and services infrequently to get motivated in your loyalty program. I know that Amazon gives its clients a list of charities and ask them to select one, you may try that too. Check out the Amazon program here it may give you some ideas.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Google - Local SEO

POS SOFTWARE

Whatever you think of Google, face it, most Australians today are using it.

Currently, in Australia, about 95% of all searches are done on Google. Where are you here?

According to google trends over the past five (5) years, the number of searches for "near me" has gone up from 2 to 76 an increase of 38 times.

Modern consumers are using google to find local businesses. Reaching this local audience is critical to any retailer today. This is now the dominant way consumers are finding you. This is a very large section of any new business you are going to get potentially.

As an SMB owner, you may feel that investing time into your Google search ranking is useless as it means competing with larger retailers, but this is not true for local searches. I am sure that when you examine 

Try this go to google.com.au

Put the business type you are eg barber, chemist, newsagent, etc and add the following words "near me" and see what comes up.

Are you happy with that result?

Check out who is on top, ask yourself why are they doing better than you?

I am sure you will find the ones on top are businesses somewhat comparable to your business; this is because Google recognises the benefits of local business as it knows that shoppers do. So they go to a lot of trouble to make sure that the local searches are as relevant to the local shopper as possible.

With that being said, there are critical elements to ranking well in local search.

 

Here is an idea to start you off which is FREE

Put a listing for yourself in your Google My Business listing: Google My Business is a free online listing service offered by Google. Add your details. 

Then get some good reviews by asking happy customers to write something.

At least now you exist in Google.

If you want something more we can help you with that too.

 

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Customer acquisition cost

POS SOFTWARE

The customer acquisition cost is defined as the total amount of money that you spent on your total marketing eg your advertising plus your promotions plus your event costs, product giveaways, extra salaries etc divided by the number of new customers that you got. 

This is one cost that every business needs to know. 

Let us say that I spent $200 to get a professionally designed advertisement and then $1,000 this month to display it in a newspaper. As a result, I got ten sales. My customer acquisition cost here is $1,200 / 10 sales = $120. 

Conversely, if I spent $200 on a Facebook advertisement and got one sale, then my customer acquisition cost here is $200 / 1 sales = $200. 

If I experimented with someone else and I spent $800, and I got five customers, well my customer acquisition cost here is $800 / 5 sales = $160

All things being equal, it would make more sense for me to advertise in the newspaper.

To get these figures is not hard. Your point of sale system can tell you what your new sales are. Looking at a similar time last year and comparing it to this year adjust with the trend and you can get a rough answer. For example, last year about now we did an average of 100 sales a day, this year we did 105 customers a day during the promotion, business is up 2% on last year so it is about three new sales. The cost to the company to the development was $300, so our customer acquisition cost here is $300 / 3 sales = $100

Professional marketers will often say things like the rent on the new shop is $200 a month more. How many new customers will you get? If you reply four new customers a month, well he would say customer acquisition cost is $50. How does that compare? In this case the extra rent is worth it.

This, of course, is only part of the story. A person that comes into a shop and buys giftware which has a high margin is a very different customer to the one that comes into the shop and buys dog food, an item with a meager margin, but this can be discussed in another post.

The other issue is that as you have already invested in acquiring them what you need to do is give them reasons to stay with you.

Have a shot, and give me some figures please.

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KPI boards

POS SOFTWARE

This is a tip. What I have noticed in many companies, that what you will see in the back is a KPI board. This is filled out regularly and shows relevant details for the people that work there that management is particularly interested in everyone following. In a factory, I saw a board listing is the number of accidents. In a collect house, I saw one listing the amount of money collected this month.

For people into it, you can buy KPI boards special for doing this.

I saw one in a retail shop that showed top-selling items, the top-selling department, queue sizes, and the growth of loyalty program sign-ups. What the owner did was every Tuesday afternoon update from the computer, the latest figures from last week. I thought it was a good idea to get everyone on the same wavelength.  He said it worked. 

I saw another one in use in a fast food place being used as a marketing tool. They have a special burger. They put a sign up as to how many they sold last month compared to the same month the previous year and the year to date figure compared to the year to date figure for the previous year. The number of burgers they sold was quite impressive. When I enquired about it, the girl serving said this is the burger we are famous for so I decided to buy one to test it out. 

Give it a a go and see how it goes for you.

 The information is there in the computer, and it is not doing much good there if its not being used.

 

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Shopping season creep

POS SOFTWARE

Using shopping seasons is a very successful marketing method; for example, the bank Tyro referred me to a study of the Australian holiday Click Frenzy here. Even for a minor hioliday, it is impressive. 

The big one is, of course, Christmas. I have many clients that will do about 40% of their yearly trade in this shopping period. What many have noticed is that this year the Christmas shopping season is six days shorter than last year. As this shopping season is considered to start on Black Friday. This year this is 29/11/19, while last year it was on 23/11/18. That means retailers have lost six days of holiday trading. This will hurt. 

However, marketers are very astute so what they are doing is extending the holiday. The days are long gone when this season was a few days before Christmas.

Here are some exciting ideas for you to consider to extend the shopping seasons.

At the DFO shops, Black Friday sales are celebrated over three days. Maybe you should offer a similar deal.  

 

 

But why wait till Friday, take a look at Aldi, Black Friday sale starts on Wednesday. 

 

Woolworths is not waiting till Wednesday. They are into Black Friday deals now with a banner

 

If you look at the majors, many are acting similar, I have noticed that Amazon is already holding a Black Friday sales early deals as is eBay with its Black Friday deals too.

I hope this gives you food for thought. 

 

 

 

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Amazon hubs

POS SOFTWARE

 

A big challenge with online selling now is called the last mile problem.

It is easy to sell the product online, it can be delivered to an address at a cost, but is there a person at that address to accept it. This is needed as if I am sending a $500 item, I do not want to leave it on a door.

For this reason many deliveries, customer request to be sent to their work because there is no way to guarantee that someone will be at their home to accept it. Many people do not have this option, plus many people do not want people at work to know what they ordered, if its a present you often want to present it to them, not they pick it up and see what it is first and many workplaces will not do it. 

As such many large retailers have set themselves up with Click and Collect so their customers can pick it up.

 

This option is not available to large online retailers and many SMB businesses, so what they use hubs. Currently, these hubs do about 30% of all online deliveries. So these hubs do bring many people. It is a lot of traffic and now this extra traffic it is going to IGA supermarkets, Priceline pharmacies and some shopping centres. So I was pleased to hear that Amazon is extending its hubs to many of my clients.

Knowing Amazon, I am sure their payments are not going to be much for providing this service, but the real question is just how good will be this extra foot traffic be for the shops that offer these hubs.

 

 

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Product bundling

POS SOFTWARE

Product bundling is probably the most successful and common marketing tool in business today. Ours is one of the few retail packages that does it really well, I have noticed. So please follow the logic and the solution below.

You go to buy a TV cable plan. It will have a set of channels and access to some loyalty club all with one price. Another example would be if you go a restaurant and get a special price if you buy a full meal. In both cases, if you add the items up and you will find it cheaper to take the bundle.

From the business point of view, the fact is that you were unlikely to pay for six (6) news channels. Once they sell you on one, the rest is a bonus. Few would buy a full meal at a restaurant, so they package a few of the high margin items selling at a low price and give you a bit of a discount, so you buy more. Both are classic examples of product bundling.

Where it often works well in retail, is to take an item that is a hot seller, add an item that is not selling well, so you intend to discount it to get rid of it,  then put the two items together and make a bundle at a special price. What you often find is that you can sell more as a result of the hot sellers and get a better price for the lousy seller together then you could obtain individually.  

Try it out. I think you will find its a lot better an idea then discounting.

You will find it one of the most effective ways to generate traffic in your shop and generate sales.

Here is where you do it. In this example, one ordinary father's Day card was used to sell four good sellers in one bundle.

If it works, try experimenting with different combinations. 

PS Try and link the bundles to seasonal holidays and charities, once you get going you will find your imagination only limits you.

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Making a Black Friday sale

POS SOFTWARE

We are entering now the holiday season, the next major one in the rank is on the 29 November, Black Friday which as you can see from google trends now has overtaken in interest in Australia Fathers day. It is a shopping holiday,

 

As you can see from the graph, Black Friday in blue has overtaken in Australia interest Fathers Day.

 

While the sales aren't quite so big in Australia as in the USA where it is the biggest shopping day of the year, it is a big shopping day whose sales are growing every year here. Last year on Black Friday, Australian shoppers spent about $320 million. I bet its more this year as interest in it this year appears to be extraordinarily high

I noticed that most of the larger retailers, eg Woolworths, IKEA  and Priceline are all doing something. Why not you?  

Easy to set up in our system a special!

Pick a few products and advertise it as a Black Friday special with an offer like  

* XXX dollars off - What people like on Black Friday are expensive items on discount

* BOGO - Buy <some quantity> and get one free. This has proven to be a very successful method of selling 

* Double points - Can often work

Give it a whirl and see how you go.

 

Update: In a South Australian, retailers across the Adelaide CBD and suburbs will be given the opportunity to trade until midnight on that Friday, as a result of strong demand from consumers.

 

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Social Media Is Important For Your Small Business

POS SOFTWARE

I was listening to a video newsletter. In this video what the presenter did was did an interview with a small business owner who owns and runs a successful lotto agency in Dandenong. 

She is clearly an experienced business owner, running a business not too dissimilar to many of my clients. Now, what when asked did she think was so important to her business success. Her response was social media in particular Facebook and Instagram and being involved in the local community. When I looked up her business Facebook account, I could see that yes she was regularly posting information relevant to her customers on the latest in lotto and her community. Clearly based on her interview here, it is working for her business. 

Too many people today have not caught on that the traditional methods of marketing advertising or direct mail are less effective. Today much of the world largely connects, as she states through the social media community.

PS: What is weird about social media and shows how different it is, is although I do not know her or her business, through social media, I can see that she is a friend of a very close friend of mine. It is a small world.

What is amazing with such powerful tools like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Instagram, Pinterest, etc which are free to business what amazes me, is too many business people do not use it. Yet the reality is that these have fundamentally changed the way we are now connecting, communicating and collaborating.

If you have one of our websites, it is easy to automatically connect these social media to your site.

Here are some benefits of doing social media:

Customers: 

It can bring more customers to your shop. Most people are looking regularly at their social media accounts if you are there, it brings your shop to their attention.

Create more Sales:

Have something to sell them, why not offer them something. New products are coming in all the time. It does not have to be earth-shaking, a new shipment of pet food, a new range of cards, some cooking pots that are now on sale, some new magazine, etc 

Cost: You cannot beat FREE. 

Builds Relationships with your Customers: People on social media are communicating. You can answer questions, give advice on a product and talk to potential customers quickly and efficiently. 

Still unsure

The first point is to look at facebook to see what similar business to yours are doing. Then if you like what you see and want something similar and need help and are a supported user of ours, we do offer a free setup of a facebook account for your business.

 

 

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Customer displays

POS SOFTWARE

Today, a customer display is something that anyone with a Point-of-Sale should consider. 

Here are some advantages and some points to consider if you are thinking of getting one.

The advantages are:

- That your customers like to see what you are charging them and appreciate you being transparent as they can see that they are being charged fairly as they can see what is happening now. This inspires confidence among your customer and in practice, can boost customer loyalty. 

- It also gives them something to do, so making them feel less than they are waiting. Instead, your customer feeling like a spectator, they think they are a participant.  

- It reduces the problems of queries after the transaction is done. Time is saved as most queries can be done when they happen. 

- Finally, a customer display in our system can be used to convey important messages to customers to consider as they are waiting their turn, like here. If you are interested in *Discount Vouchers*, this is a better way to go then receipts which very few customers get in real-time in modern retail.

 

 

If you are looking at such a unit!

Here are some points to consider.

-Workout what the screen size should be for you, maybe look at a few that other shops have before deciding. The screen size, once selected, can not be changed. As a general rule, a bit bigger is better.

-You need something hardy. Retail is a harsh environment for computer equipment. It will be knocked, if it is flimsy, it will smash. It will be in the open, so it gets dirty, and dust will get into it. Make sure it can handle this.

-Over the lifetime of this screen, it will be moved and adjusted, so make sure that the screen can be lifted up and down, and the angle of the screen can be changed. Ideally, you should be able to change it from vertical to horizontal and anywhere angle in between.

 

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Using Price Changes

POS SOFTWARE

In your point of sale software, it is straightforward to change prices.

What several of our clients do, eg cafes and hairdressers have specials at certain times of the day! For example, after 2 pm, a cafe starts offering the remainder of the sandwiches and a coffee on a special deal. The sandwich that is not sold today, will probably be in the rubbish bin tonight. 

A hairdresser if she is quiet in the morning often offers a special on haircuts for seniors.

Make a Happy Hour 

If you want to experiment with such a limited-time promotion which last on a few hours, then it is worthwhile looking into the price changing facilities in our POS system as it can handle such changes effortlessly on the fly. 

Just a few taps and you are ready to go. 

Good luck and let me know how it goes.

Note the Image is by Gerd Altmann

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Small business websites getting it seen

POS SOFTWARE

 

Retail websites

Your thinking of getting a website, the first point most people wonder about is will people come to buy off me if I have a website?

The technical term for this is SEO, and it is a problem. For any product that you sell, the odds are that many people will list it on the web for sale too. 

The first point to say is just because your product is not unique does not mean that it will not sell on the web. There are very few companies that have such unique products; almost everyone has competitors that make claims of having a similar product or service to them.

Ask yourself if you search online for a product or service, what are you looking to find out? Generally, it is either a location if they want to go there and/or a price if they want to buy and get delivered online.  That you are big or small is often a fairly minor question? If your fax paper price is $8 and the same brand is in Officeworks at $10, almost no-one will buy at Officeworks and pay more.

On the net, David can and does beat Goliath.

However, what you need to do is make sure that you are seen on Google. Today in Australia, Google has 94.7% of all searches.  

Now how do you get up high, well for most people the best strategy is to act local, and Google is built to do this. In its searches, it takes this into account, your location.

What you need to investigate is what words do people search on Google to find a business like yours. The best ones to ask are your customers, ask them "Say you were on Google and trying to find a business like mine, what would you put in?" There are also plenty of websites and tools that can help you if you want to get more technical.

 

Once you have your list to get up high in Google so you can be seen with "fax paper" as a search term is probably impossible without serious money but "fax paper near me" is not hard. Put in your website that you sell that fax paper and your location. Make sure you list the suburbs you handle, and Google will do the rest. Similarly, this will happen with any other product you see, eg dog food, lipstick, newspapers, etc. 

A decent web designer or service provider like what we have will be able to offer you practical advice on this.

Some fine-tuning will need to be done, some words you will find it very hard but many will be very easy.

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Storm Area 51

POS SOFTWARE

Well if anyone wants an example of the power of Facebook in today's world, well here it is Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us. Over 2 million people have signed up to go, although it is highly doubtful that anywhere that number will show up. 

Even if an alien or evidence of any alien technology is there which I doubt, I am sure it will not be found. If it is there, it will be moved and/or hidden today. And I doubt that any of the demonstrators will get anywhere near the base. They are quite a distance from the wall, and the wall encloses an area of 8,000 sq miles. Area 51 is about 150 sq miles and is well inside this wall. The area is protected by many guards who are instructed to shoot to kill and people have been killed trying to break in. There are good reasons for the guards' concerns to keep people out as we do know that the area has highly toxic materials lying around and two people who work in Area 51, probably died from this. I just hope no-one gets hurt.

Still, it has proven to be a significant business event, many businesses and merchandise related to this event are on offer. If you have some items that fit such an event, you should put it in front as there is undoubtedly a lot of buzz about it.

 

 

 

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Try using email in your point-of-sale system to market

POS SOFTWARE

Try using email in your point-of-sale system to market

 

 

Most of our clients use social media, mainly Facebook, to market their business, but I would recommend although it is more work to look at email. On the basic version, email is also free so several of my clients take advantage of this to send email newsletters free.

It is one of the best solutions for small-business owners who are just starting email marketing campaigns, mainly because of its free service for small businesses. So my advice is to try it first and if it does not work out after a while and you find you want something better well at least you will have acquired the necessary experience and knowledge to move on.

Now the first step is to collect emails, lots of them. Consider running a contest in your shop, to build up your email list. Some ideas my clients use, a free second chance at lotto, a cake, a gift voucher, a special offer etc. To enter the customer needs to fill out a form or deposit your business card. What you need to start are about 500 accounts to kick start it.

If you require, we provide a free service to our clients which supplies you for your geographic area a list of email addresses for the local businesses too to help out. But please 

Note about Spamming

There are strict laws in Australia about spamming and maybe check with your association first before sending any email newsletters to these businesses.

Our understanding of the law and we are not solicitors nor experts in such matters is that if a person gives you, an email address on a business card, then it is okay to send them an email newsletter. If they are in a business that you supply goods that they require like a tap supplier, you can send an email newsletter to a plumber about taps without permission but a solicitor even though they use taps too in their office, you cannot send without permission.

Ready to start

Now once you have about 500 email addresses, the next step is to get our existing client's email addresses into the newsletter system. The most popular method of sending such newsletters by far with our point-of-sale system is with MailChimp although there are many others that do similar tasks and from my research, they are all technically about the same. Not one stood out to me in functionality. 

Now to get them into MailChimp please go to cash register reports.

Then go to customers.

 

Once there select

Customer List (Excel)

Now run the report, and it will give you a listing of your customers and their email addresses. This you import into MailChimp. I would recommend doing this regularly in that way as then your email marketing has the latest email addresses.

Now what you need to do is write an email newsletter. This will take some time at first but get easier as time gets on.

The read rate is about 20+%, so on 500 emails, you will have 100 readers which is a good start to build on.

Now the next step is to figure out what is the best times to send these emails. The same email can vary up to 20% readership. There is no getting around the fact that every business is different and both the best day and time varies. After a while, you will work it out. 

Also, what you need to consider is that promotions can be especially useful; a newsletter before a significant event or holiday shopping season can be very effective. 

By timing your emails right, you will get maximum results from your efforts.

 

Make sure that each of your email newsletters has your name and address, and an unsubscribe note; you can get into big trouble if you do not. 

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Market researching products to sell

POS SOFTWARE

Your POS System can tell you what has sold well in a department and it will tell you what has sold well with another product. This is all good stuff for upselling. The problem is that you are looking at is what was in your store, which is only a tiny subset of the products available plus it is only telling you what *WAS*. What you need to know is what is *NOW* and what will *BE*!

Here is a tip to help you to do this which you can do.

In Amazon Australia, you will find the best seller's list here

Now pick a department say "Pet Supplies" and out will pop all the top sellers here 

These are the top-selling items updated hourly, so it is current information.  

Now go through the items and see which ones appeal to you. You will see the sales ranking. If you click on the items, you will see a lot of details, including what people think about these items.

I am sure it will give you a lot to think about them.

The best part about it is these are local products.

Now if you wanted to see what people in the US were buying, after all, they are not that different to Australian consumers, you can check the US website here

Be careful as although many think, that the US market is more advanced than ours. I am no so sure of this in my experience. It is an odd combination of being more advanced and more behind us plus it's a different market with different costs, benefits and requirements so be cautious about using it. Still because of its Winter/Summer being reversed there many of you will get many goods ideas of where the market is moving.

 

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How to start cross-selling

POS SOFTWARE

As a benchmark, the average basket size in an SMB retail business in Australia is about 2.54. If yours is below that, you need to look at cross-selling.

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Cross-selling

In any case, even if you are over that figure, I would say that proper cross-selling techniques will increase revenue for your shop.

Now in retail there are two ways to cross-sell, the one is active ask a customer "is there anything else you want?", the other is passive which is making sure that the appropriate goods to the person buying are brought to their attention.

So how do you identify the goods that you can offer? Well, you go on history, you see the past shopping behaviour of people that purchased items have brought in your shop.

It is very easy to do with our point of sale software.

Firstly get your top ten sellers, you can get more but we will start there.

Go to Register reports.

 

 

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

 

 

Now put appropriate dates (say last three months) and ask for the top ten, like I said you can put more in but let us start there.

Now go to sales register reports section here

and select the stock companion report

Put in the same dates, put in your top-selling items and now and ask for a full listing.

Now go through the list and there is a fair bit to look at there. Now take notes of those items that sell well with these items. 

Now check in the shelves, where these items are these companion products close by, can the customer for those items quickly see these items? If not, then you have to start rearranging stock because that is what is selling. 

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Retailing by the weather

POS SOFTWARE

Retailing by the weather

The recent cold and wet wave sweeping across Australia show how weather can affect retail sales. The effect is stated to be 3.2%. 

Which I can believe as a while ago, I did a study of my clients sales data and the weather. What I showed was that changes in temperature much more then the rain made impact sales of many products. I guess that people can reschedule in the day when they go shopping or pick a place which is covered if it is raining but if its too hot or cold many will cancel going shopping today.  Also, I found that specific products do sell well if the weather is appropriate.

This a smart retailer can take advantage of, for example, have a stand filled with goods that are suitable for a hot day, another if it is raining, etc.  In the appropriate weather, bring that stand to the front and move the inappropriate one to the back.  Also, they can check that their drink fridge, is full on a hot day. I have seen figures of 200% increase in drink sales during a heat wave.

This is all too easy to do as seven-day forecasts are reasonably accurate nowadays.

Here is a step by step plan to take advantage of the weather.

Create a list of your products based on the weather; all you need to do is check the days that were unusually hot, cold, wet, etc. Now see what happened using your sales report from our system and your experience to see what sold well on those days.

Now bundle these products together by hot, cold, wet day etc.

Now every week, get the seven-day forecast here, select your area and see what coming days are abnormal.

Now you have a coming sales window, make sure you are prepared as by matching your product to match the appropriate weather conditions, you can increase conversions and sales. 

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Tip: Have an EOFY sale too

POS SOFTWARE

Years ago, there was a stocktaking sale, rapidly however this has expanded, and now we have an EOFY sale too. If you look up google trends and do a search on "EOFY sale" in Australia

This is the graph you will get. In the past seven years, it has grown dramatically from nothing 

 

Ask yourself, why do companies, like us do it? Mainly because of supplies as they are doing deals, why?

 

) They are budgeting for the end of the financial year, they know they need money to pay taxes, payroll tax, insurance, etc. So they want to liquidate stock to pay the tax bill.

) Managers need soon to justify to their stakeholders what they have done. This is their last chance as soon the financial reports will be done and with it their annual performance report card. They need excellent performance if they want their promotions, jobs and bonuses. You do not want to be a sales manager with a flat sales figure what you want to do is show I have sold well and now sales are going up. If their sales are low, they know they need to get cracking.

) Organisations are starting to implement changes to the next financial year. We see, for example, a supplier will say to us, we are moving out of these lines and going more into these lines are you interested in......

) Companies are now starting to organise their stock for a stocktake. They can see now stock that is getting old, looking obsolescent, that they have ranges of stock that is fragmented - a lot of one item and not enough of another item, damaged stock and were slow selling/overstocked assortment items. They are very conscious of the stock they need to lose. I had one come to see me a few days ago, "Bernard, we have a $300,000 worth of old monitors, can you move some of them?" 

) If you are into seasonal products, it is the high selling point of winter, from now on winter stock will start to drop. Now is probably the last chance you get to get rid of this stock in bulk, so it is a good time to clear stock from this season to make way for the new.

The result is that the consumer does see real deals here, so it becomes to them an exciting time. Many have tax reasons why they should move now e.g. Instant Tax write off. They can see retailers trying to move stock. The trick here is that consumers have to navigate through the deals to get to the ones that are good for them.

So it does work.

What I suggest is that consider doing all the above, look at your stock, see how it looks then support, run and promote your 'end of financial year' sale. I can tell you that it works for us.

 

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Psychology with price labels

POS SOFTWARE

Jurek Leon is an Australian consultant in retail. He certainly knows his stuff, often talks on TV and puts out an excellent monthly newsletter for retailers which I recommend you subscribe too [Website removed] here.

His current edition has a fascinating post. 

Say we have an item in your shop which was $9, now maybe you buy a whole lot at a low price or perhaps you want to get rid of them, so you decide to reduce the amount to $5.99. Note like many good retailers you are not going at $6, but $5.99 plus you are not going to say 33% off because you know that dollar amount discounts work better than percentage discounts.

So you make a label to sell them and say you have these two options.

Two price labels compared

Option A: The reduced price is shown in big letters

Option B: The old price is shown in big letters.

Now, have a good look and decide which one is better?

Please, after you have worked out which one is better and decide why you think its better scroll down to the answer below. 

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..

..

..

..

..

..

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Most people go for the first one, I did too as its the new price I want people to see, but studies show that it Option B that works better.  Why? Well according to the study. 

"It’s because the discounted price is literally smaller than the original. Behavioural economists like Bri Williams call this the ‘size-congruency effect’. She says you are better to go with your marked down price in smaller font (Option B) than the conventional stand out (Option A), proving yet again that our assumptions about how best to influence customers can often be incorrect."

This is an example to her that retailers need to test and measure results. I agree with that too, how else are you going to find what works best with your business.

 

 

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