Higher profits as business recovers

LIFE AS WE KNEW IT

We enter 2020 feeling good about the prospects for the future. Our economy was strengthening, unemployment numbers were the lowest we’d ever seen, the stock market was strong, and retail was booming. Then came… COVID 19, the pandemic and everything changed, in a heartbeat. The life we ​​all live took a dramatic turn like most of us have never seen before. Over the next few months, we all made some serious adjustments to our lives. People ran after it and started hoarding toilet paper, of all things. I don’t think we really knew what to do with ourselves since we had to “shelter at home”. For me, most of my business has been online, from home, with merchants across the country. From an operational standpoint, that hadn’t changed for me, but what happened was there were no merchants to talk to. They were forcibly closed and business came to a standstill and livelihoods were crushed. I’m not telling you anything you don’t know and haven’t experienced for yourself, so let’s move on to what’s next.

As I write this, it is June 24 and segments of the country are gradually starting to reopen, albeit with very different operating conditions. Fewer people at a time in your establishment, possibly wearing masks, and of course proper social distancing (there’s a term I bet you’ve never used before). Also, since most people have lost a lot of income in the last three months, discretionary capital for spending has been reduced considerably, which of course has a negative impact on the bottom line for traders. So what can you do to capture as much business as possible from pent-up demand and keep more in your bank account? There are ways that may not have been considered in the past that you might want to take a look at.

First, let’s talk about how people pay for their purchases. Probably most of your business transactions are paid for with some form of plastic. In the past, customers would simply hand over their card for you to swipe, if you didn’t have a customer in front of a germ to swipe or insert their card on their own. Now, with this virus still alive and well, customers are very hesitant to hand over their card for fear of catching COVID 19. Using a FREE front-facing terminal or FREE POS system is crucial to providing security for your customers now. In fact, even better than that is a terminal that offers NFC (Near Field Communications), where the customer simply holds their card or mobile phone over the device and reads the information on the card, without touching anything (unless maybe it’s a debit transaction that would require entering your PIN number. This is how I pay in person as often as I have available using the Wallet app on my mobile. The fact is, I’ve been doing this for quite some time even before the virus hit, simply for the convenience of it.

Ok, now we’ve talked about the best solution to help your customers feel comfortable paying for your property’s goods or services. Now, let’s talk about what you’re doing to drive more of that sales volume to your bottom line. Do you use gift cards in creative ways to attract customers to your business? If not, there are some great ideas that a lot of my merchants have used in the past that are now ramping up to try to push sales to regain some ground after the long shutdown. Unfortunately, and sadly, there are many companies that just got hit too hard and won’t come back. But, if you’re up and running, you simply need to look at anything you can do to get the ball rolling quickly.

When was the last time you performed an analysis of your payment providers’ services? Are you taking advantage of the much lower debit transaction fees? Are you set up on the most transparent pricing platform available to minimize the percentage you’re paying? One of the newer pricing mechanisms available to merchants these days is a program that gives you the advantage that you can make the same profit on non-cash transactions as you can on cash transactions. Now there’s something you should at least investigate. This program alone allows you to keep much more of any transaction in your pocket and helps you catch up on lost ground in recent months.

Well, I’ve rambled on long enough for now. I’ve been meaning to write this for a few weeks, but I’ve been busy finishing projects on my to-do list, if you know what I mean. And now that the business is starting to attract more and more attention to me, it’s time to get back to work. I wish him much success in his recovery and pray that he remains safe and healthy.