How to use your current customer sales data to drive future sales

You have already equipped your business with a smart terminal and point of sale device that allow you to securely take payments and streamline your suite of business operations. 

As a result, tasks such as inventory and employee management, customer relationships management, and finances flow with ease. 

You even have an accurate reporting system that will assist you in examining past trends and predicting future ones so that you can take your sales to the next level.

Gauge your true profits.

Not all successful sales are created equal. Some yield more profits than others, and it’s not just a matter of the cost of the item that was purchased.

This is where effective use of data can make a difference. Utilize it to calculate the employee time and effort, costs and fees, and even the number of customer interactions that occurred before the sale was made to get a much more accurate sense of what you spent. 

You can then be better at giving your staff the compensation they deserve for their hard work and for gauging the actual costs and benefits of stocking a particular item.

Gain insights from past customer activities.

As soon as you enter a purchase into your point of sale device, its database can be configured to capture various helpful pieces of information that can prove invaluable. These can include not only customer contact details and demographics, but also buying history, interests, and preferences.

With each new customer, your database gains another entry and a host of additional data points that your system’s reporting tools can capture and manipulate. 

As a result, you can divide customers into niche segment groups to whom you can market specialty items and send promotions that can lead to additional sales and an even stronger connection to your brand.

Reward the performance of your best sales representatives.

Your POS system is stocked with all manner of data, including information on how each of your employees has performed over a specified period of time. 

You can get very granular and even learn what products they are most adept at selling and at which times of the day their effectiveness is maximized.

Armed with this information, you can then incentivize those who excel, delegating tasks appropriately to maximize sales and customer engagement. 

By the same token, you are now positioned to provide targeted training and/or job reassignment to members of your team who may be struggling. In the end, this personalized attention can lead to higher morale, more contented employees, and happier customers.

Identify areas of concern in your sales process.

As we indicated above, data can be broken down into tiny pieces, which can be extremely illuminating for your business. 

A case in point occurs when you use quantitative information to break down every step of the sales process in order to detect bottlenecks and glitches that interfere and impede your success.

Once again, your sales representatives are key in this process. When you have identified a problem and noted the stage in your sales funnel where it occurred, look to see how your staff members performed. Who struggled and who found a creative solution? 

Again, this furnishes you with great opportunities for providing both rewards and training where appropriate and can be the foundation for future successful sales endeavors.

Identify and improve conversion rates.

Think of the sales funnel as a series of filters that work to separate serious buyers from casual ones at every stage. Your goal should be to maximize the number of people who make it to the final goal of becoming paying customers.

Carefully analyzing your sales data will enable you to see where people are getting off the train earlier than you would like. After you make careful adjustments according to the data, your conversion rates — and overall sales — will go up.

Your point of sale system is a treasure trove of insights about your past sales, customer shopping histories, and employee performance. 

With so many nuggets just a few clicks away, the system gives you numerous incentives to harness the massive power of the various data types available to you. Once you do, you will find that your employees are more engaged and satisfied with their work, your customers feel closer to your brand, and your profits are increased. 

If you still have questions about how to leverage your POS’s data analytics tools, talk to your payment processing provider today to get started.