IMPROVE YOUR POS SYSTEM

Your Point of Sale (POS), also known as point of purchase, is the area where transactions are completed.

five strategies for boosting your POS system success:

1. Define your target market. As with any form of marketing, this should be your first step before spending any time or money. Think about your average customer in terms of age, sex, income, where they live and what their interests are. Once you understand who your customers are, you’ll have a much better idea of what they need and how you can sell the solution.
2. Location, location, location. Identify where you should put your POS. There are many tools available, including shelf talkers (signs placed on the shelves listing product benefits and features), catalogues, brochures, business cards, flyers, scratch cards, promotional videos, and so on. To understand which tools to use and where to put them, you need to look at your customers’ habits.
3. Be clear with your messaging. A POS with no obvious purpose is just a waste of time. Your POS needs to either provide a solution to a problem customers are experiencing or introduce them to something new that appeals. Remember that it’s generally not enough to ask people to act now; you need to offer an incentive to do so.
4. Putting together a POS system. You probably don’t need to include every possible POS element in your store – that would be overkill. Your POS should assist customers, not intrude on them or annoy them. Be careful to keep your POS system balanced. Your suppliers might even have POS material available for you, which you can use to complement your system. If they don’t, consider offering to put something together to advertise their product and suggest they help you to fund the costs, give you a discount on stock or offer you a prize to give away. This is known as cooperative advertising.
5. Decide how often to change your POS material. Consider your type of business when deciding how often to change your POS to keep it fresh and exciting.

Once you’ve realised the potential of a good POS system, you’ll need to begin to test and measure what works. Start small and figure out what works best for you before you invest heavily in a POS.