RetailNOW Myth: BUSTED!
Some vendors fear losing their resellers to the competition at RetailNOW. The evidence proves otherwise.
With RetailNOW 2012 right around the corner (and sold out to boot), many of the RSPA committees’ focus has switched to outreach; specifically getting new faces to the show. In particular, the Vendor Working Group is leading the charge (as they have the past few years).
Year after year we hear the same reasons why vendors are concerned with bringing their channel to the show- not wanting to lose that reseller partner to competition.
Sara Petrus, RSPA’s Membership Manager, recently reached out to three of our vendor members, who have traditionally brought their channel to RetailNOW. The general consensus is that encouraging resellers to attend RetailNOW gives them access to educational tools, industry best practices and the invaluable face-to-face time.
“At each RSPA event, there are many actionable and specific takeaways our resellers get which can be put to immediate use to improve their sales and profitability. While there is always a competitive risk to exposing our resellers to alternative solutions, the competitive risk associated with not being exposed is far greater; resellers will lose their insight and competitive edge by not attending,” said Jeff Riley, Dinerware.
Not convinced?
“It will always be a valid concern, as every POS product that’s worth anything is being shown at RetailNOW. Still, we feel that the benefits outweigh the risks, and if we’ve done our job the rest of the year our resellers won’t be looking for a new product,” said John Giles, Future POS.
If we still haven’t changed your mind…
“If you are on the fence about inviting your resellers to RetailNOW, I would encourage you to try it. It is great way to spend some extra time with your existing resellers without spending your travel budget on individual visits,” said Will Atkinson, CAP Software.
So go ahead, invite your channel to come. Give them access to the educational tools, industry best practices and squeeze in some face to face time while you are there. You have done your job by providing excellent service, support and products to your resellers, now let RSPA do our job by providing resources to help grow their businesses.
Don’t know where to start? Try reaching out to RSPA’s Marketing and Communications Department, we have plenty of resources available to vendors to promote the show to their channel. We can work with you to provide an email template, web banners, and more. Don’t hesitate to reach out to us to see how we can help. Publications@GoRSPA.org
Online and social media-based marketing has, by most all accounts taken over as a growing, if not predominate tactic for businesses to connect to customers. This is true for connecting to both consumers (B2C) and other businesses (B2B) – marketing online and social is where you want to be sure you are allocating some of your marketing investment.
If this statement is true, we wondered what the state of social media adoption is by the POS industry in particular. We set off to uncover what both POS developers and POS resellers are doing to connect to their audience online.
We saw technology companies and socially savvy businesses leaping out to show the way, but many more are hanging back and saying, “I see my competitors doing it and my customers certainly are, but I’m not sure how to get involved – what do I do,” or “I don’t get it, what’s the payoff?”
Expecting Rapid Adoption in 2012
We discovered the use of online and social marketing in the Point of Sale industry is growing and will likely grow rapidly in 2012. There are a lot of lessons to be learned from how social marketing is being used by other companies and industries and will be interesting to see how this influences POS developers and resellers.
Assessment Methodology
We began with establishing a baseline of what’s going on now in the industry. We selected a number of POS developers and POS resellers and conducted a ‘Social Presence Snapshot.’ We did not solicit them; ask about their plans for 2012, or what they tried last year. We used the name of their company or their brand in a Google search much like a prospective customer might. We conducted similar searches to see if they had developed a presence in Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter or YouTube – the more popular social sites today.
Once we identified where they were, we evaluated the presence for each. We ran their main website through an automated evaluation tool which looked at several details, mostly what’s behind their sites. The data provided indications of their interest and ability to engage on both their own website and in social media with an audience.
We looked at obvious indicators and many of the more subtle ones – such as:
- Was their main site set up to engage visitors?
- Did they maintain a blog?
- How many posts were made?
- How often posts were made?
- Other indicators of engagement or involvement
We applied similar tactics across their social presence, looking at the number of followers, members or “Likes” and the quantity and frequency of posts in their social presence. To make the data easier to compare, we translated those assessments into a scale of 1 to 5 with 5 being the best and 1 being poor– so a higher number is better. A zero was awarded if they had no presence in a particular social site.
Assessment Scope
By the end of the investigation we had conducted the assessment of 20 firms – twelve POS resellers, eight POS developers. The results were compiled and served as a proxy to represent the industry overall, the developer community, and the reseller community.
Assessment Results
The evaluation found the industry at 2.2, Developers scored 3.0 and Resellers scored 1.4.
The analysis shows the industry expects their own websites to do the heavy lifting of presenting their business to the market online. Few had enabled their site in a mobile format, despite the huge growth of mobile this year and its predicted expansion for 2012.
LinkedIn was next behind the main website, but lagged by a significant margin. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube followed.
Developers Lead the Way
Developers overall presence in Facebook was stronger than LinkedIn with Twitter and YouTube lagging. The lack of a presence in Facebook showed this is likely where they might focus their activity in 2012. Online video should help developers better support resellers on their products.
Reseller Breakdown
Resellers appear to be rummaging their way through the confusion and uncertainty of social marketing but still have room for improvement.
We are very confident resellers will improve quickly in their use and understanding of social marketing. Why? Their customers, the merchants, will demand it. Merchants have discovered how powerful the online and social marketing technology is in generating business and running as quickly as they can to adopting social marketing tactics. Merchants in food service, hospitality and retail are firmly on the way to a much broader adoption already; food service exploded this year in social and the hospitality groups have been investing in social marketing also have got on board.
Conclusion
There is an opportunity for POS resellers to help merchants with their online and social marketing. Merchants want to understand how social marketing can lead to more business, more often with more customers and they will expect their POS partners to help them.
POS resellers can create opportunity by addressing the use of social marketing for themselves and their customers. Using online and social marketing in a B2B setting is not only desirable today, but essential. The data is piling up which demonstrates the ROI from a social marketing presence is powerful and becoming an important part of any marketing plan. The market is moving to embrace online and social marketing – is 2012 your year to do so?
An astounding 97% of consumers search online when looking for a local business*. That means just about everybody goes to Google (except for those that use Blekko.com, a search engine most people never heard of) when they want to find a local Italian restaurant, hair stylist or a place to buy paint. It’s likely that, after hearing this statistic, more than 97% of business owners would hesitate to categorize their store or restaurant as one of the town’s “best kept secrets.”
Google was originally designed to organize the world’s information and make it easy to find digital results found on all sorts of websites. Internet sites appearing in the top 10 search results get more web traffic which generally translates to more business. In their efforts to have more influence in the physical world, Google created Google Places, their local platform mixed in with Google Maps, which displays results for brick-and-mortar business locations above the traditional ranking of website results. It’s safe to extrapolate that a brick-and-mortar location listed high in the Google Places results will get more exposure which will help generate more physical traffic in the store. To see a sample of Google Places, try searching for “Restaurants in Dallas, TX” (or other business types or locations.)
It’s very easy to create a listing on Google Places and it’s something every retail store or restaurant should do. The listings are viewable to any users that click on them and can share valued information with potential customers including address, hours, business type (ex: night club or hardware store), cuisine type, payments types accepted, e-mail address and more. The details and descriptions in Google Places should be written in a user-friendly fashion, including many pictures, as the listing is often the first impression for a potential customer and can be decisive in their decision to patronize the business. This content is indexed; higher quality content will help result in a better Google Places ranking. Creating a listing on Google Places involves registering the business on their web page, filling in as much high quality content as possible and “verifying” the listing via phone or a postcard in the mail.
Establishing a Google Place will help, but there is more a business can do to improve their ranking. As with many aspects of search, the Google Places ranking can be influenced by a social factor — customer reviews. Consumers can review a business through its Google Place; higher star rankings (on a 5-star scale), number of reviews (through both Google Places and third party sites), frequency of reviews and keywords in their description are a huge help. For example, a customer review that says “Best Italian food in Dallas” is more effective than “Great food”. Long reviews including locations, detail and content will be a huge help to boost ratings.
Point of sale VARs should consider making this their domain — as easy as it is to setup a Google Place for their store, many retailers prefer to outsource their technology. It’s fairly easy to master Google Places. As a reseller, you can consider offering to setup a Google Place for a modest fee, and perhaps even expand the service to monthly analytics and coaching. Not only will this drive extra revenue, it will also position you as even more important and relevant in the eyes of your customers.
By the way, Microsoft Bing and Yahoo Search also have their own versions of local search, but they don’t really matter since 97% of people use Google. (Kidding! You should set those up too!)
For more information on Google Places, Google ‘Google Places’. Let’s make this interactive. We’d like to hear about your successes and your failures. If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, leave a comment below or reach out to our “Socially Speaking” author on Twitter using #SociallySpeaking so others can follow the dialogue, or email us at Publications@GoRSPA.org.
Source of Statistic: * Google
By Guest Blogger: David Gosman (@Golem5), CEO of pcAmerica (@pcAmerica)
A Salute to Sales People
Here is a long overdue salute to the sales people who work in the retail technology industry. Over the years I’ve had an opportunity to work with many sales people, both good and bad. The one constant is the impact that sales people have on business – whether you are a large or small company. Whether selling a high-profile customer or the first sale in a new market segment, good sales people can make a difference every day of the week.
Interestingly enough, the success of a sales person has no relation to age or years in the business. There are old experienced sales stars and duds along with newbie sales stars and duds. It has to do with a passion for the business, a drive to be the best and empathy for the customer. Here are some best practices I’ve observed from the sales stars.
Sales stars know the playing field.
Here’s an analogy – don’t dress for a hockey game when you’re playing baseball. Know the playing field before you enter the game. I had an opportunity to see a brand new sales person rise to number one in sales the first year on the job. They identified all of the prospects and customers in their territory and then identified the best prospects before calling on the customers. They maximized their selling time by knowing which prospects were in the buying mode before making a direct sales call.
Sales stars sweat the details.
The best product demos are not last-minute presentations. The best demos I have seen go right down to the lighting and what’s on the table in front of the prospect. Most importantly, the sales star is prepared to show the prospect a solution based on their business needs not simply a demonstration of the technology.
Sales stars listen.
There is an old saying from Yogi Berra – “You can observe a lot just by watching” and of course listening to the customer. Get the right picture by conducting your surveys when the customer is busy. Do your restaurant survey on a busy Friday night, not a Monday afternoon.
Sales stars know the industry.
As mentioned above, sales stars sell business solutions based on listening to the customer. To do that, you need to understand the technology, marketplace and the local community. Sales stars are part of their business community; they know the customers, they visit the establishments, and they know the latest business and technology trends. They are a source of knowledge and are constantly collecting new information.
Sales stars use all of the tools.
Today there are many new ways to engage a prospect and maintain communication with your customers. Sales stars use all of the new and established tools to make themselves more efficient and successful. Tweet best practices for your customer community to follow, use QR codes on your business card and don’t forget to knock on doors.
A sales star has a good working relationship with the rest of the staff.
That level of collaboration helps the entire company be successful. They never forget who they work for and balance that with maintaining excellent customer relationships.
Back in my days with DTS, Dan Smith (who was an instructor at NCR’s Sugar Camp prior to his time at DTS) used to say “Selling is simple, not easy.” He was right on target. I’ve only scratched the surface of what it takes to be a sales star. Good sales people take their position seriously and know that they are the first impression a prospect will see from the company and product they represent. So, here’s a salute to all of the sales people who work hard every day to bring in the customers that make their businesses run. Thank you!
Don’t Take Yourself So Seriously
We sure don’t! But we do take our benefits seriously. That’s why we are willing to go above and beyond the cheesy factor to create these fun holiday videos.
Happy Holidays from the RSPA crew!
