You invested LOTS of time and money in your spa / beauty salon / hair salon construction, design, lighting and Operating Equipments while your POS software has just been an item on the checklist. Why not get the most of it?
To help the user of spa / beauty salon / hair salon / veterinary business owners, here are 10 techniques to improve the use of your P.O.S system:
Technique 1: Understand your business
The first step to success with point of sale is a thorough understanding of your own business and where a POS system can help you cut the costs, improve efficiency and increase your overall profitability. How? you must use it not only to collect cash at the end of the day, but invest your personal time on it.
Technique 2: IT Software a must
I see many business owners in leisure industry complaining about the POS costs for them. Hang on a second: there are able to invest AED 2,800 in the latest Iphone or Android on the market, that main function is to phone, browse internet and download applications. The POS is a serious software tools that can tell you about all your clients, your accounting, your inventory and much more with a few clicks....
Just for your information a Property Management Software for Hotels cost vary between AED 30,000 to AED 150,000, so don't be afraid by a POS that cost less than AED 10,000.
What do you know about the 5 clients that are coming today to your business? Right now, all you probably know is that they are coming for a treatment. To increase sales, you need to engage with people, and this does not stop with the receptionist job description. It is a common team objective that need to be raised to collect clients data information.
Technique 4: Stop throwing money in Magazine / Newspaper, understand your data
How many of you invest or barter AED 5,000 for a full page ads in a prominent magazine, a newspaper or a web banner? All those media support have a media kit. Does the media kit information match with your POS data? If the magazine is distributed in Jumeirah, and your Business Unit is in JLT, the question you should ask yourself is "do we have clients from Jumeirah area"?
The next step is to look in your POS how many clients come from Jumeirah area? What are the social demographics aspects of your media partner? This can only be answered by you if you collect more than a "firstname" and a "phone number" in your POS. Otherwise don't be surprise if you get "zero" sales from your marketing actions.
Use your database to literally map out where your customers are coming from, establish target zones for your marketing efforts and see how much sales come in 5 kilometers area. Strive to get more information about your clients.
Technique 5: Everyone knows the value of a Good Ad campaigns...or do they?
Whether you focus on printed marketing material, radio commercials or email blasts to registered customers, it's a must to track accurately the results of all the advertising campaigns that you run.
By tracking sales back to the original marketing stream you can get a clear idea of those campaigns that are indeed bringing more customers into your establishment. A simple means to achieve this is to trained your staff on how to politely collect information from your clients. It could be as simple as a pleasant greeting and an enquiry regarding where the client heard about your latest services. The answers collected can be recorded in the POS system. The more information you are able to collect, the more useful the resulting reports will be focusing your marketing efforts and growing your business.
To develop a loyalty program, you must leverage your existing customer base. These are people who have, on their own accord, found your establishment and been so significantly impressed by the services and products. They had a positive experience with your brand.
This could come in the forms of collecting mailing address, mobile phone numbers, email address with the promise to notify them of upcoming sales and promotions. For bigger ticket items or tailored services, personalized phone calls (from the business phone number) from a team member may be a more appropriate form of contact.
One step further to this tactic is the offering of a loyalty or membership program that entitle those who sign up for discounts not available to members of the general public. This is an offer that not only enforces brand loyalty through the perception of "exclusivity", but also guaranteed to increase the instance of customers willing to supply their details. These programs are fully compatible with POS capabilities. You might then make contact with customers in your database on a weekly, monthly or seasonal basis.
Treatments have been perfectly executed, customers have been happily pampered and the time has finally come for you to wind down your operation and bask in a job well-done. However, before you close the day, you need to follow through the closing steps of your POS and that does not stop with only counting the money.
Print the sales report, settle the credit card batch and run the POS report as per your closing checklist, that will provide useful insights on your operations that may include:
- Paid Out Report: shows all cash paid out for a specified time period and include a subtotal and a reason field to document the pay out was made,
- Today's Sales Report: shows sales broken by sub departments,
- Voided Items Report: shows a listing of all items that have been voided with a specified time frame as well as the reason,
Technique 8: Retail Sales scanner design for efficiency operation?
The extra items that was installed at your salon, with a scanner function has the ability to assist you tracking the movement of your retail sales. Let's face it, small enterprises are not staffed to manage a proper monthly inventory on their own. The function of the scanner can not only help them increase the speed of operations, but also assist them in getting an accurate control of their inventory.
Technique 9: Champion the process of Inventory management
For operators, Inventory Management plays a significant role in the process of controlling the costs and reducing waste. However without a proper tracking, it can be quite a challenge.
Technique 10: Is your business unit making money?
The POS are equipped with accounting systems, that can allow you to manage not only the sales transactions, but all your accounting operations (payable, receivable, cost efficiency, inventory), providing you invest some time and resource to program it.
SO, how do you become the Master of POS?
POS today are getting more and more precise for independent retailer. You should opt for a POS that can hold large amounts of information about your customers, because this is literally your gold mine. In marketing, it's easy to understand someone who has already bought a service from you, know where to get the latest products, this customer will buy again. You just need to stay in touch with them and offer things you know they will buy.
For the inventory and sales analysis, you can contact us to assess your needs and re-organize your structure. Contact at: info@rsvp-hospitality.com
The Profit Therapy Team by RSVP Hospitality
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