5 Tips On Getting Your POS Ready for the Holiday Season
November 16, 2018
The holiday season is fun – but also stressful – for business owners and shoppers alike. You can use your point of sale system (POS) to enhance the fun and lessen the stress. Follow these 5 tips to get more smiles (and sales) during the busiest shopping season of the year.
#1. Streamline Your Check-Out Process
The single biggest point of stress for both shoppers and staff is long check out lines. It takes us all back to endless waits for Santa…
But instead of an obnoxious Wicked Witch butting in, you can deploy sales associates with tablets or mobile devices to checkout customers in line or from anywhere in the store. This will shorten lines and give everybody more time to shop.
Also consider setting up a cash only station, which is even more effective when you offer a cash discount in lieu of a credit card processing fee. This way people with cash can not only save time but get a discount on their purchase, a win/win for customers and the business.
Last, be sure to set up all sales, coupon codes, gift cards, or other payment variables in your POS System. Most people take crowds and lines in stride during the holidays, but tempers can flare when a sales price needs a tedious price check.
And don’t forget your POS can ring up transactions anywhere there’s WIFI. So make sure you’re in place at local holiday markets, fairs, and celebrations!
#2. Run a Sales Report
Do you know exactly how your business is doing from the beginning to end of the holiday season?
Do you know what your daily sales patterns are?
Do you know your top inventory and salespeople?
Running a sales report will help you identify what your top sellers do to maximize your holiday sales. Business owners often run a sales report at the end of every day, but it’s also a good idea to run the sales report intermittently to gain further insights.
Run hourly reports. These help you understand how your sales peak throughout the day. Predict rushes and create strategies that will boost sales during lulls.
Monthly reports. This will help you understand your most popular days of the week. Reporting is similar to hourly reports but lets you see daily patterns. Develop strategies to be ready on the busiest days and boost sales on the slow ones.
Last Year’s Report. The data from last year’s holiday sales help you plan this year’s. Advance planning is a huge advantage with holiday sales.
#3. Centralize Your Inventory
Your inventory will move (as if by sleigh…) during events like Black Friday and Cyber Monday. When you manually track inventory or use multiple systems, you put yourself at risk for missed sales opportunities. Centralize your inventory in your POS to make sure you don’t overstock slow-selling items or run out of hot sellers.
It’s vital to look for a POS that’s a unified system. It should be omnichannel, accept all forms of payment, have comprehensive reporting and analytics, and allow you to manage your inventory.
#4. Set Up Seasonal Staff in Your POS
A POS makes it easy to add and schedule seasonal staff. Make sure you:
Set up your staff in your POS. Get new people set up with permissions in the system, ready to clock in and out.
Train new people in the POS system so they can process transactions without error. Use your long-term hires who know the system to help out.
A pro tip is to use your scheduling software reports to identify your top salespeople. Then schedule those people during your peak hours.
#5. Send Out Holiday Marketing
Your POS tracks customer information, making it easy to do the all-important holiday email campaigns. A Marketing 360® Payments, this integrates with our CRM software allowing for beautifully targeted campaigns based on segments and personalization.
Well before the shopping blitz begins, you should have email templates like this ready to go:
As you collect more data, year after year, on your best customers, you can send increasingly personalized emails with gift ideas that will have them itching to spend.
Put online connectivity and marketing data to work for you this holiday season. If your payment processing, POS software, and marketing aren’t getting it done during this vital, competitive shopping ritual, contact us today.
You should never lose a holiday sale because you ran out of popular products, you were understaffed, or you weren’t prepared to process a sale.