Build Loyalty Through Your POS

For some garden centers a POS system is just a really expensive cash register. That's not a good thing. During a session entitled "POS for Customer Relations," IGC consultant Sid Raisch explained nuances of POS systems and how they can help you connect with your customers.

POS systems are notorious for their finance and inventory control capabilities, but more and more garden centers need to start tapping into its database to learn about their customers and their buying habits.

Referencing a Dale Carnegie principle, Sid said, "The sweetest sound to any person is the sound of their own name." And that's where many of us come up short, missing out on providing that personal connection. Gathering customer names and contact information is crucial when building your POS's database. Right off the bat, make a privacy promise clear to your customers, which states that their information will not be shared with anyone.

Sid noted that this has been a good year for collecting contact information, compared to prior years. "Everyone's looking for deals," he said.

Sid suggests to print out a list of your top 100 customers, the biggest spenders. Make an effort to show your appreciation. Send them a thank you card, make a personal phone call to them, give them first dibs on a new shipment or even sale items.

A POS system also gives you the ability to "systematically lock-in" customers. We'll use Christmas trees as an example (but this can really be applicable to anything). When the trees come in around Thanksgiving, use your POS system to pull up those customers who ordered, say, trees over 9 feet. Make phone calls to let them know the trees came in. This way you've personalized the experience and they won't risk missing out on a tree in the size they're looking for. They're locked into you and locked out of your competitors.

Tracking Inventory Through POS

Do you have a mountain of inventory in your retail shop? The money tied up in that inventory isn't in bank feeding cash flow. Do you know the carrying cost of inventory as a percentage of your costs? Steve Bailey asked that question of Wilson's Garden Center's Ned Wilson, Rice's Nursery & Landscaping's Steve Maddox and Altum's Garden Center's Karen Thacker. Here are some tips from them on how they use POS for better inventory management.

• Hire a data entry person to enter purchase orders. “Too many fingers in that pie cause problems,” Wilson says.

• Rice's has added the margin on each product to its purchase order. “We need to know before it's received what the margin is going to be,” Maddox says. “As keepers of inventory, we need to find the average cost.” Maddox says Rice's used to just look at margins in the winter, but now can look on the fly during the season.

• Thacker says if you can get inventory reports on a weekly basis, only make purchases of two to three weeks of inventory. "It gives enough overage if you sell more than in weeks past. If you're trending more on a certain fertilizer, you need to use gut and order for that. Don't just go by the numbers.”

• Dead and slow-moving inventory reports are important, although it can be scary to see exactly how much inventory isn't moving.
  “We usually buy based on emotions and then rationalize what we buy,” Wilson says. When you see what you're not selling, you eventually have to swallow your pride and get rid of it.”

• Altum's tracks its top 100 customers based on sales. POS helps the store track who hasn't shopped lately, so a staffer can call and welcome the customer back to the store.

• Rice's has 7,000 to 8,000 active loyalty program customers. Maddox says the number of customers buying more is increasing and the number of customers buying less is decreasing.