Intro to Increasing Sales Size and Frequency

0:00 Thank you, everyone, for joining. The final topic

0:03 of the webinar workshop series that we brought out for 2026.

0:07 my name is Charlene Gillespie, and I've had the pleasure of presenting the topics this year, and it's been great. I just wanted to point out, for those that have not attended any of the topics. The webinar is presented as a general overview of what we will presenting in the workshop in two weeks time.

0:26 The information that we're going to cover today is going to give you an idea. If it's interesting to you, is it do you want to attend the workshop? So today we're going to spend about 20 to 30 minutes just talking about the, the concepts that we'll, we'll go through in a product demo in the workshop. The workshop is about an hour and a half to two hours and we will walk through the product.

0:48 So today we are talking about getting more from every sale and getting customers to come back more often. So we're going to talk about six levers in system five. So levers would be features that can help accomplish today's topic.

1:05 Okay. So now we're talking about revenue growth. And it comes down to two sides of an equation more per transaction. How do you increase that transaction or more transactions per customer. So on the left side if we want to increase the average sale, the things that we're going to talk about are kits, modifiers, the use of comments, quantity breaks with price schedules and special orders on the right side.

1:33 If we are wanting to increase the purchase frequency, then that it does reference a previous topic that we went through. But loyalty points, gift cards, follow up, some referral tracking or not something that has been covered. So those are a bit new to the series, but it does all speak to the customer lifetime value formula and the things that we are going to talk about as far as features in system five all have an impact on that customer lifetime value formula of average order value, purchases per year margin, and then how long a customer has been with you.

2:13 So the things that we can do can introduce change to the customer lifetime value formula. Now, if you hadn't attended the workshop on the club customer lifetime value. It we do reference that a bit in this workshop. And the calculator that helps with that will be provided in the workshop in a couple of weeks time.

2:42 Okay. So what we're going to talk about today is six levers, each paired with a system by feature. So the growth lever is let's say we want to add one more item. Add one more item means okay, well a customer is buying something. It could be something. They could be buying something else. So kits, modifiers and comments or all features that impact the sales transaction.

3:07 They can offer suggestions that staff can share with the customer that's purchasing. You know, like what most many customers are pairing this purchase with and suggest an item. It's almost like the bottom of the Amazon searches. You know, when you buy something, you put it in the cart. It's got, oh, customers also purchase this. It's the same idea as that.

3:28 So add more items. The next one is Buy more at once. So quantity discounts encourage customers to buy more items that the unit cost is lower. Consumables are the perfect fit for this. I'm going to need this eventually, so why not take the lower price and just buy more? I've succumbed to that myself with like garbage bags or you know, if you've got like the by three or more, then you get a better price.

3:59 Something that's really perhaps many of you are using already, but sell beyond what's on hand. So special orders, you can have a a physical or digital catalog of items that you can procure and make it easy for the customer to be able to go through that experience. If you're not doing special orders today, it may not be a fit for your business, but it is a really strong feature of system five.

4:27 It was actually the first topic we did this year, and it it really does help. We're going to go through. I'll share a bit more on special orders. In a moment. Next is give them a reason to return. So points programs, gift cards and follow ups. The follow ups is really customer engagement through marketing or a phone call or, you know, perhaps you have a personal relationship with them, with your key customers, and it ties directly into know what to offer next.

5:03 So that's reporting on your customer and really knowing them. You know, once you start to analyze what your customers are purchasing and when they're when they're purchasing, over time, it allows you to tie that back into the follow ups. And that can encourage more frequency. When you know the buying criteria, then you can be strategic about what you want to offer and when to do it with follow ups.

5:32 And we're going to dig a little bit deeper into that, of course. And then lastly we've got our referral tracking. So a referral program is a great way to increase your customer base. Like have your customer tell a friend and that friend comes in and makes a purchase. You reward the customer who referred. And then that new customer also refers a friend.

5:55 So we're going to talk about the referral tracking program in system five as well.

6:05 Okay. So we're going to break down into the the the six levers. So the very first is our kids. Now some of you may be using kits today but system five kits it's really a bill of materials feature. Like it. It lists out what you actually need to deliver, but it lets you sell stock and price a group of items as a one thing.

6:30 They sit in the inventory, of course, and the different ones we have are we've got our dynamic kits very common. This kit is a recipe, right? It's it's all the items. It's not a physically stocked item. When you sell a dynamic kit. System five removes all the components from inventory at that moment. The best example is that we all have a dining room or a furniture suite.

6:56 So a dining room suite that pulls the tables and chairs out of stock when it's sold is the example of a living room set where you've got your, you know, your, sectional, and you've got a lazy boy and you've got end tables. That's a great example of a suite where you can price it differently because they're buying all the components together.

7:20 We also have a static kit, and that kit is built ahead of time and stocked as its own item, like a pre-assembled gift basket. It's put together and then put on a shelf. And that also doesn't need to be just a gift basket on a shelf. It could be things that just naturally go together.

7:39 Now we also have tag along kits, and that's where a related item is attached automatically. This is a great example of where you would do a bottle deposit, delivery charge, or perhaps an upsell. And that's where that's increasing that the the average sale size. Lots of examples of how we could do that. Kits do explode. So they have the opportunity to be able to have the let's go back to the dining room set, where the dining room set is the actual item, and that's all the customer sees on the invoice.

8:15 Or it can explode out and exploding out all the items. So the table, the chairs, the leaf probably about example of the leaf. But what exploding allows for is swapping out of different items and then with kits. Pricing a kit can be priced as a single kit price or as just the sum of the parts. What I mean by that is that perhaps if somebody came in and just bought.

8:45 Let's go back to furniture, but just a love seat that might be priced as a single item, but you might get a price break if you bought the love seat and the sofa and the La-Z-Boy. So it's kind of package deals. Typically uses for this is selling bundles faster. You know, like if you've got a bundle price that may be more appealing to a customer than just buying a single item, if it's not that much more to have the add on, they can visualize that being something more appealing.

9:19 And assembling a package. Mandatory add ons is another good one. So tag along. Kits like we've said, deposits accessories that should always go with a product like the the that kits that when you buy leather furniture you've got the leather cleaner is an example.

9:41 And then I guess, well, we talked about exploding kits. Okay. So in the workshop we will build examples of each of these types of kits. And then we can see how they behave in system five.

9:56 Okay. Modifiers not quite as common as our kit feature, but modifiers in system five are like a Q&A. It's a question and answer menu attached to a product. So when somebody is building something on an invoice, a modifier prompts the salesperson with questions before they move on. The common use cases for this are. As an example, if you are selling a product that has an option of delivery your pickup, then you can have a question embedded into a modifier that says delivery or pickup and even prefer day and it you build up the list and then the salesperson selects is this delivery or pickup.

10:40 And then it's clear on the invoice. The alternative to that is people just use a delivery part. But the modifier makes a nice, I guess, user interface for the salesperson to just answer the question so they don't forget. Another example would be like installations or fulfillment details. So you want to be able to select like the is there a or is there a room size that needs to be indicated as far as fulfilling the the order, upselling extended warranties, accessories or add ons like like kits or something like that.

11:23 The the mon. The most common with the modifiers is really around furniture, where there is custom furniture where you're selecting the fabric, the color, the style. Those types of things become like the custom special order, which we're going to talk about in a minute. But modifiers do ask those important questions that need to happen at the time of sale.

11:50 Another good one is documenting or declining warranties. So if there is a decline of warranty, that can be a question. And when you add that to a modifier, it becomes a comment or an item on the actual invoice. So it really streamline streamlines the point of sale process. So just a distinction between the two when we're talking about kits or modifiers.

12:15 So kits bundle actual fixed items into a package. Modifiers prompt the salesperson for choices. And just to be clear with modifiers, those choices can be an actual part. So do they want the upgraded, fabric. And then that becomes an upsell. So there's a charge to that okay.

12:43 So quantity price breaks let you give a better price. When a customer buys more of an item. And system five they're built right into our price schedule module rather than the module. But our price schedules, rather than being a separate pricing system, they apply to everybody who buys the item. They aren't tied to a specific customer. That's something different, like specific price schedules are tied to a customer, but quantity price breaks are just kind of global.

13:16 Once the customer purchases a certain threshold of quantity, the price then drops to a different level in the price schedules. It's actually quite like a typical setup is the full price is at the lowest quantity, and then as the quantity increases in increments of what you decide, then the price drops. This can also be applied to price schedules.

13:45 So if you have price schedules in place, you can have a separate tier where people that are on a different price level aren't. I guess paying less because you have a different quantity break for your price schedule customers than you do for regular. So the typical use cases for this would be, I guess like bulk discounts. So in hardware or plumbing, industrial supply, where you deal with contractors where they need to buy in volume.

14:21 And that's where we've seen that that is the most use of the quantity discounts where you're buying in volume. It also encourages larger orders. Like honestly, I, I succumb to that myself where it's like, well, we I'm going to use it anyway as I share previously. Why not buy the larger package or quantity so that you've got them on hand and then you're getting a different price?

14:53 Okay. And then special orders. So special orders they let you sell an item you don't stock. You can order it from the supplier. Track it through to delivery. The workflow is built around your work orders in system five, so you can follow each customer from order to sale to fulfillment. And the best use case for this, I've found, is that it joins special orders with the virtual warehouse.

15:20 So special orders begin as a new sale recorded as a work order.

15:26 Staff members pick an item from the virtual warehouse, and that Virtual Warehouse holds a vendors digital catalog, which is separate from your active inventory. So you've never ordered this before. Selecting one of them prompts the system to create a special order, and the staff sets the quantity and then it cuz it. Now the item can be created as a new part number in your active inventory.

15:56 It also can be used as one shared miscellaneous special order part instead of creating a new part for every order. The reason for that is that it keeps the inventory from getting cluttered. It's particularly useful for businesses that have quite unique or specific type items that likely wouldn't be ordered again by somebody else, so maybe it's very custom or very designed.

16:27 That's where it becomes useful, because then you're not creating a part number for every new item that comes up in the catalog. It puts a mask over top of the miscellaneous part. So it still shows the vendor part number. And it's actually a very, it's a very effective feature that we can walk through in the workshop. But Special Orders is a great, option for increasing the not average sale size, but, you know, just the sale in general.

17:04 Okay. So now we're just going to move into the last three levers and that's increasing the purchase frequency. Let's give a customer a reason to return.

17:17 Okay. So system five handles loyalty points and promotions through a promotion set up. It's not a paid feature. You just turn it on. Each promotion is a rule that decides what item qualifies and what reward the customer gets. Points is the best example of a reward type, because it's very common in all of retail. But they do offer other ones, other rewards or discounts, sale prices and free products.

17:49 The types we have are you can collect points by dollar amount. So if a customer spends a set amount, or sorry, a set minimum, then they earn a fixed number of points. You can also do percentage which is my preference where your points equal a percentage of the selling price. So if you spend $100 you get ten points type of thing.

18:12 So it's a percentage. Typical uses are, you know, you've got your loyalty program that rewards spending and that can be, you know, something that is granted to only certain customers if you want, points on every purchase or on certain categories. You can also do things like move slow stock, like if you've got stock that just isn't moving, you could put a promotion on in system five that really targets that.

18:49 Okay. And then we also the gift cards and certificates. That's a you know, it's certainly a lever that can bring customers back into the store. So frequency internal gift cards and certificates are tracked in system five. And they're honestly very easy to set up. Now you certainly can have gift cards through external. So meaning it running through your payment processor.

19:14 It does require that you're integrated your payment processing with system five. But regardless, the setup is easy for internal. You turn on the program in the setup wizard, define the card number range, enable the gift card tender type, create a gift card category and part number and design a label. And really it's. Or I guess you can get preprinted gift cards, but it's it's set to go.

19:40 So it's a really easy program to set up.

19:48 Okay a customer follow ups and appointments. This is something that, you know, system five CRM capabilities is reasonable for being able to record follow ups. We have the comments that provide a calendar pop up and remind people to do things such as reach out to a follow up for a customer. You can schedule follow ups against the customer for things like service reminders or a check in after a purchase.

20:17 Those things create customer engagement, and they also provide opportunity to talk to them about additional things that they may be needing. So the outcome really is like we're being proactive, not reactive. It's just a scheduled check in. And we're going to talk about reporting in just a minute. But the reporting actually can help with that as well.

20:44 Okay. And then referral tracking is something that is not that common, but it is a pretty interesting feature that brings someone to you so your best customers can also be your best marketers. If you reward the customers that are referring other customers, we have a way to track that in system five, and the outcome is really new customer acquisition.

21:11 And honestly, the lowest cost of a new customer is one that brings other customers in. So that ties back into the like the gift card and the loyalty program.

21:26 Okay, so almost done here. Know who to target. So we've got some custom reporting in here that helps you identify your top spenders such as the customer report designer, or customers who have stopped purchasing. Honestly, your ranking sales report, you can rank customers by their sales for a selected period, and that really shows you your top revenue customers.

21:50 It doesn't show you your top profitable. And that comes back to that customer lifetime value calculation that is useful. But ranking sales report really does rank your customers, the customer yearly sales purchasing patterns across the year like that shows you information on when and what your customers are purchasing, so that can allow you to make different choices about what you want to do with with the customers.

22:21 As far as the follow ups, the reach outs, and then your category sales by customer. Same thing. What a customer buys and what what they haven't thought. So how can you tie that together? So if a customer is like looking or purchasing in a typical category A, how do you get them to purchasing a category B or what couples nicely with category A?

22:46 And then lastly, your look up words. Look up words really allow you to segregate your cat or your customers into different tiers, and that's just helpful for filtering on other reports that you're running and what you would like to do next with that customer.

23:10 Okay, so that is my presentation about our workshop that's coming up in a couple of weeks. I invite you all to join us on Thursday, November 12th at 9:00, where we're going to walk through all of those levers in system five with good examples. And if you're interested in attending, it is a paid event, $79 per seat. You can purchase online@sales.com, and or you can talk to your account manager and they can help you out.

23:43 So.

23:48 Sorry I got distracted by a question. Linda. Where is the automatic volume pricing found? I've never seen that in So we will go through that. Melinda. It's not a a setting and setup wizard. It's actually if you look at your price schedules. If you look at your price schedules, there is a quantity discount column on the right hand side.

24:11 And that is where you're going to set that. But we will walk through that in the workshop. So with that, I do thank you for attending this afternoon, and I do hope you got some ideas from our time today on how to increase your sales size and frequency. And I really hope to see you in the workshop.

24:30 Thanks so much. Have a good afternoon.