Whatever kind of small business you run, one of the measures of success is “expanding the business”, or “opening more branches”. Many owners see opening branches as difficult and as a risk to how well they can manage the operation. But there is now something that makes expansion far more manageable and much easier to run: adopting a portable POS terminal. Beyond letting an owner see the overall picture of each branch at a glance, it makes the work itself easier.
We have gathered the best techniques for using a portable POS terminal — the ones that will make managing your business easier and help it grow faster, whatever the circumstances.
What opening more branches does for a small business
- It makes the business stronger
- It sharpens your competitive advantage
- It adds more points of distribution
- It creates more opportunities to earn
- It reduces the risk of loss
- It creates more chances to build a new customer base and widen the market you sell to
- It gives consumers more confidence in you
- It strengthens your bargaining position with distributors
- It develops your staff and your team and increases their capacity to grow
When is it time to expand?
- When you can see an opportunity or an opening to add products or services related to your brand
- When you have an effective shop management system and an effective way of working
- When you have a solid financial reserve
- When the industry or the market your business sits in is growing, or demand is rising
- When you have a strong customer base, or a group of customers loyal to your brand for the long term
- When the business has been profitable for more than three years
- When you have strong staff and a strong team, ready to grow through new challenges in the work
Five tips on opening branches for a small business, and making more profit while you do it
1. Analyse, and look for new opportunities
If you are going to widen the business, offering the same products and services may no longer be enough. Analyse and look for new products or services related to your brand, as a way of drawing customers in and making your brand more interesting — which creates the chance of more profit.
2. Expand towards a wider target market
There is no denying that customers, the people you are aiming at, are the decisive factor in whether your business survives and grows. Beyond looking after your existing customers well, finding a wider new audience is what will help the business grow. That may mean researching whether the site you are thinking of opening in actually has people likely to buy your products or services — or working out which other groups of consumers might be interested in what you sell.
3. Build a clear model for the business
Before you start opening branches, the model you are working from should be clear, so that you and your team can see a systematic way of working and a clearer overall picture. It also helps you adjust the business to what consumers in the market want, because the more branches you have, the more differences you will see between groups of customers, between the conditions of each shop, and between the terms of each site. Building a model business prepares you properly for expansion.
4. Control the quality of management across every branch, systematically
Keep the standard of shop management consistently high, from the ingredients you choose and the way products are made through to the service — greeting customers, taking orders, taking payment, and after-sales care. Set one standard across every branch, developed and refined from your model shop, covering both the way the work is done and the way the team is developed, so that expansion runs as efficiently as possible.
5. Manage customer relationships better than before, with a POS terminal built for small shops
Most people will have some familiarity with CRM — customer relationship management. It matters to every kind of business, and particularly to a small business looking to open branches, because the real principle behind CRM is putting the customer first, always. A portable POS terminal helps you manage and run the operation so that it meets the whole range of what your customers want — people, money, the way the work is done, how long things take, and customer relationships with it. Let us look at what a POS terminal, or portable till, actually offers.
- It organises your sales and ordering data systematically
- It makes your data easy, convenient and safe to reach
- It improves how efficiently the team works
- It creates more opportunities to lift sales and profit
- It leaves customers more satisfied
The portable POS from Qashier: easy to manage, and it grows your sales
Beyond setting a good marketing strategy, choosing an effective tool — a portable POS terminal — matters just as much. The POS terminal for small shops from Qashier comes with a complete set of features at a modest price, and suits every kind of business, whether that is a clothes shop, a restaurant or a retail shop. It accepts every form of payment, makes managing stock easier and more convenient than before, and lets you check on how your staff are working and how sales are going, anywhere and at any time.
If you are interested in a portable POS terminal — the all-in-one way to manage a business across several branches — contact us for more details on +66 64 729 9763 or LINE: @qashier.th