18 Sep 2024 | Windward Software
How To Set Up A Pop-Up Showroom
Explore strategies for using a pop-up showroom to enhance brand visibility, gather customer insights, and create unique shopping experiences. Discover different methods of tracking the success including using clerks, subtypes, and lookup words.
- The webinar opened with a discussion on the benefits of a pop-up showroom, even for businesses with well-established brick-and-mortar presences. It was noted that pop-up showrooms can be a game-changing strategy to complement a permanent store location.
- Scott Rockins took over the discussion, emphasizing the versatility of pop-up showrooms as a strategy for experimenting and growing a business.
- Scott demonstrated how to track the success of a pop-up showroom experiment using Windward System 5. Three tools were suggested: segregating sales by invoice, by clerk, and reporting on these to gauge the success of the remote setup.
- The webinar explored how to set up a clerk for an outside activity and how to report by the clerk for the timeframe of the secondary business location.
- Scott also demonstrated how to use subtypes as a secondary invoice type to segregate sales from a particular activity.
- The use of lookup words was also discussed. This can be used in combination with the other methods or separately, particularly when the business wants to know which customers are new because of the pop-up showroom.
- It was noted that if the pop-up showroom experiment is successful and the business wants to establish a recurring or permanent showroom, the departments feature of System 5 would be useful for stock control and separate accounting.
- The webinar ended with a Q&A segment, during which Scott addressed questions on running date range reports and making use of a clerk with kits for easy tracking.
- Finally, Scott made attendees aware of an upcoming in-person event in Dallas and provided resources for further learning in the Windward Learning Academy.
0:05
Well, hello, everybody.
0:07
Thanks for joining today's webinar.
0:08
Today's topic is experimenting with a pop-up showroom.
0:13
So even for businesses with well-established brick-and-mortar presence, pop-up showrooms offer a dynamic way to engage customers, reach new markets, and create unforgettable brand experiences.
0:24
Today's session will talk about how to execute a pop-up showroom using Windward System 5, whether you're looking to enhance your brand visibility, gather customer insights, or create a new unique shopping experience, pop-up showrooms can be a game-changing strategy to complement your permanent location, their permanent store location.
0:43
Today, Scott Rockins is going to take it away.
0:47
Go ahead, Scott.
0:48
Thanks, Kyle.
0:50
So like Kyle's saying, one really great strategy you can use when you're experimenting and growing your business is pop-up showroom.
0:59
And although we're using that terminology here, I'd encourage you to think about, you know, a sidewalk sale, a farmer's market, a showroom across town or a showroom in the next town when you just want to test the waters and see if that's going to be a good way to find new business or a completely different market to serve.
1:19
So what I want to show you today is both an easy way in system five to just try things out and then if things should work out and you think that is a viable option, just a a little bit of conversation about what the proper setup in system five for multiple locations looks like.
1:37
So first we're just gonna go through some quick and easy things to try and then at the end we'll just touch quickly on our departments feature which does show you, well, should you have two locations, what does that look like for anyone here that may not have that?
1:52
We're gonna use three tools today, although there might be some others that come into play, that you can use to segregate sales by invoice, by clerk, and now you can report on those to see how successful your remote setup might be.
2:11
So whether that's just outside the front door, down at the farmer's market, or across down in a different showroom you've rented for the month, let's say.
2:18
So we're gonna look at subtypes, clerk setup that you could use for this, and just how you can report on those things.
2:25
We might touch a little bit on something called a lookup word if it comes into play that we want to track which customers came from the business experiment as opposed to how much in dollars came from the business experiment.
2:42
So if we look here in system five, I'm going to start with setting up a clerk.
2:49
So let's say in our first example, we're going to do a sidewalk sale, let's say, or something near our location, This is our running example.
3:03
If I set up a separate clerk, so here my setup wizard under users, if I set up a clerk here and you can see I've set up number six is showroom alpha or name it whatever you'd like and I make sure all the sales from this outside activity are linked to this clerk, then I can report by the clerk for the timeframe I've been running the secondary business location and see how effective that was.
3:36
So just to give you a simple example of that, we'll run a quick cash sale, and we'll just make sure we pick that clerk.
3:51
And in this example, I won't select a customer.
4:03
We're gonna sell some Levi's here.
4:16
Now one note, as I am working through this, you can see I'm gonna sell them some jeans.
4:23
There's a couple things that you'll have to consider as you're going through this.
4:29
One is that although these sales will remove stock from your system, you've had to physically take that stock out of your retail location.
4:37
And these quick experimental things I'm showing you won't manage your stock control for you.
4:42
But it should be short term enough that that'll be okay.
4:46
They also aren't gonna have a real big accounting effect for you.
4:50
So on the accounting reporting, you're not gonna have a way to separate it out.
4:54
you'll need to use the full setup for that.
4:58
But it lets you experiment.
5:00
So on this invoice with clerk set to showroom alpha, if I tender this out, also that's another point, you're gonna need a mobile payment solution to make this work.
5:11
But most payment providers, certainly our partners, have a mobile device that you can operate through Wi-Fi, something like that.
5:18
So you'd need to make sure you have internet access.
5:28
If we wanna report on the sales we've made in that way, just linked to that clerk, there's multiple reports you can use.
5:34
The one that we're gonna lean on today is called the invoice report.
5:39
So what I like about that report, which you find here under reports, sales reports, customer and invoice sales reports, right here, invoice report, is it so customizable and then you can save your settings.
5:59
So if you save your settings on this report, you can make a reusable report that you can use over and over.
6:07
So in this example, the filter I'm using is the clerk.
6:10
So to select a clerk, I'm gonna go to the second tab that says advanced and just pick everything from showroom alpha.
6:20
And you'll notice there's a sale I ran in my practice beforehand, a few sales and the one that I just did.
6:27
So this lets me see my, really, as much detail as I want about these sales.
6:35
So here I've got it set very simply.
6:36
I can see my cost and my revenue, my taxes and so on.
6:40
I can also, in this report, under the settings, I can be more detailed if I want and show the invoice lines or where's the, or the profit analysis and view that again.
6:55
and now I've got a little bit more gritty data.
6:58
So you can really customize this report quite a lot and be able to track what's happened at that little side venture you've tried to see if it's worth doing on a more permanent basis.
7:13
So using a clerk is a pretty simple way to do it, and that's our sort of first method.
7:23
The second method, which is quite similar, but it allows you to not use the clerk because perhaps you have two or three people and you want to see how those different clerks performed in the location.
7:37
So you don't want to muddy the waters by just using a clerk.
7:40
You can use what's called a subtype.
7:43
Now to show you how this works, I'm going to have to do just a small presentation on subtypes.
7:48
So a subtypes are like a secondary invoice type.
7:54
So for example, when I run a new sale, I have my primary invoice types and underneath I have subtypes and I'm just going to need to turn those on in the Setup Wizard.
8:11
So first thing we need to do is go into the Setup Wizard here and in our invoice setup under options two, where is it, select the subtype on work orders or invoices.
8:37
so you wouldn't want those turned on.
8:45
The next thing you're gonna wanna do is name and color code your subtypes.
8:51
That happens in the printing area.
8:53
So under setup, we'll go to printing options and invoice setup.
9:02
And here you can see the printing tree for the terminal I'm using.
9:08
Over here on the right, you can see this tab called subtypes and you can see there's a number of different subtypes that I've set up here.
9:16
Now subtypes are often used for sales environments where there's many steps in delivery or fulfillment.
9:24
So for example, special ordering or there's some sort of service work going on or some sort of authorization on the work.
9:31
Subtypes are often used to track which step in the process you are at.
9:36
This is an alternative use to the subtype.
9:38
So let's say I've got a showroom in the mall, I've made that subtype L and I did that just by typing in here and then selecting a color.
9:54
And now I'm gonna be able to flag any particular sale with one of these subtypes.
10:01
Subtypes have lots of uses and at the end, we'll show you how to find some information about that in your Windward Learning Academy account.
10:08
But for right now, I'm gonna use these different subtypes to segregate the sales from a particular activity.
10:20
So if I run another sale, now the one thing about subtype approach is that If I do a work order, for example, you'll see the subtypes here.
10:31
If I do a cash sale, oh yeah, it's coming through for me actually, my bad.
10:38
So say I'm gonna do a cash sale and it's a sidewalk sale.
10:42
I can just flag it like that.
10:44
So instead of the clerk, I could use this approach.
10:55
Sell some products.
11:17
And we'll tender them out.
11:24
You can also control your printing by subtype a little bit.
11:28
So that can be helpful as well in some instances.
11:32
So now if I go look at that same report, the invoice report, and a lot of different reports in the software actually you can filter by subtype.
11:42
So we'll go back to the invoice report, and this time we'll change something down here.
11:49
So we'll untick all the subtypes except for the sidewalk sale, and we'll view the report that way.
12:00
And we'll see the different sales with subtype K.
12:04
And again, there's a lot of customizability in this report, so you'd be able to enhance what you see here.
12:12
If you need more data from over here, we can get a more gritty report, see exactly which products were sold.
12:28
And in the same way that you can use the clerk, this helps you just see how successful that particular activity was by using a subtype or a clerk.
12:41
Then the sort of third method I have to suggest is useful if you want to identify the customers who you've landed a sale with from the activity.
12:54
So you might do this next thing as well as what I've shown you, or instead what I've shown you.
13:01
And this is when you're gonna involve a customer.
13:04
So often if you're doing something like a farmer's market or a sidewalk sale, you're not probably gonna be gathering customer data, but if you're doing a showroom, you probably would be.
13:17
So now if we do a slightly different approach, we're gonna use something called a lookup word.
13:23
And a lookup word is again, it's a search filter, can be used in a variety of ways, but we're gonna use a customer lookup word.
13:32
So if I go into customers, and I'm just gonna pick one of our existing customers, Jim, and here under the lookup words tab, I can add a lookup word.
13:48
And again, it's just kind of like a subtype, that's a filter you can use to filter your customers.
13:54
So maybe I'm gonna go, and actually I've seen people use these customer lookup words to define the source of business for that customer.
14:07
So I've seen people use attached words like Facebook marketing or mail out marketing with this date or add in the local newspaper and they flag the customer that was this, and this will tell you which business you sourced on that advertising or marketing spend.
14:27
So it can be used in that way as well, or I guess this is another way of marketing yourself, so we're gonna flag Jim here as part of the sidewalk sale.
14:38
So then if I wanna see which news, or which customers were part of this, I just make sure they're flagged with this word.
14:47
So that does mean more steps in your process.
14:51
So for example, if I'm writing a sale and maybe I'm asking for the customer's information to give them a discount, let's say, so I'm gonna use my subtype still and I'm still gonna use the clerk in this example, but maybe I'm creating a new customer because I've found some new business and now I wanna flag them with a lookup word I can do that, and then proceed with the sale that way.
15:42
Also, on an invoice, if I go to the comments tab, there's such a thing as an invoice lookup word.
15:53
So you could use those if you want to have a filter for which invoices were part of it as well.
16:00
You just have to remember instead of adding it to the customer, you would add it here.
16:03
So it depends exactly what you wanted to achieve.
16:06
If you wanted to just know how many dollars you'd have earned on that venture, then I think probably the subtype or the cleric approach would be a simple and easy to use experiment.
16:20
If you want to know more like which customers are new business because of this venture, you could flag them, and that might be even a venture where sales aren't involved.
16:32
So, for example, if you want to flag the source of a networking event, you know, how effective that trade show was, maybe you're not selling product at the trade show, but you're flagging the customers who came from the trade show with a look upward.
16:46
That would be another approach to reporting on your marketing efforts in that regard.
16:57
So, I'm going to take a little bit of a breath there because there's a few different things we talked about.
17:02
Does anyone have any questions about this?
17:24
All right, well, if you do, please jump in or if something comes to mind, ah, there's a question.
17:32
Thank you for your question, Sean.
17:35
So Sean's asking, can you run a date range report?
17:37
So yes, you can.
17:39
So if you were using the invoice report I was showing you, so this one here, you can do that, you can set the date range right, like that, right there.
17:59
It's also worth noting that depending on which of these approaches you like, this isn't the only report you could use.
18:06
The subtypes and the lookup words and the clerks really are on quite a few reports as filters in system five.
18:15
So if it say it was running for the whole month, I could do something like that.
18:20
And it would report on all the sales that have that flag during the month.
18:30
Does that make sense, Sean?
18:41
I'd also say some other reports that would have similar filters and might be useful are the salesperson reports are also quite helpful.
18:51
So like even if you're not paying commission, the commission report is very similar to the invoice report, but it would easily let you break it down by clerk.
19:07
So if you were using the clerk approach, that could work.
19:09
I guess this one doesn't have subtypes.
19:20
Now, supposing your experiment goes well and you'd like to, say, establish a reoccurring retail showroom or a permanent showroom or a permanent presence outside of your current retail location, but in doing so, you realize you need to track the stock levels at that location, or you need to have a separate set of books available to you to do separate expenses for that.
19:53
That's where you're going to need this departments feature, which is an add-on to System 5 that's very helpful.
20:01
It can be a big jump to jump into the departments feature if you're not certain that you're going to move forward with that location.
20:08
So some of the things I've shown you today would be ways you could do a little test.
20:11
to test the waters, put your toes in, so to speak, and see if it's good enough to jump in for a full swim.
20:20
Whereas if you have these set up, these departments can be configured in a number of ways to keep track of your inventory.
20:28
So in my setup here, the warehouse has separate inventory levels in the retail showroom.
20:34
And you can have any number of these.
20:36
So I work with clients who have five to 10 of them quite often.
20:40
And that allows each set of reports in system five to be run just by that department or by all departments.
20:48
And it does things like, if I edit an item here, allows you to see your inventory levels by department over here and transfer between the departments and that sort of thing.
21:12
I'll get another question here, thank you Anders.
21:15
So, could you make use of the clerk with kits so it's easy to see who made, hold on, just gotta open up your whole question here.
21:28
Oh, that's interesting.
21:31
I'm just gonna start from the beginning.
21:32
Could you make use of a clerk with kits so it's easy to see who made the kit, say for example, a welder, and who it goes to?
21:43
I'm not sure if the clerk would be the right fit for the kit.
21:49
But you could do it by clerk.
21:52
I think probably what you might want to do there, depending on how you use kits, Enders, is when you're creating the kit, you might want to use an invoice lookup word, is what I'm thinking.
22:12
If I'm understanding, you've got a work order, and you want to see who is working on that work order, am I going down the right road there?
22:19
Can you help me?
22:23
Right, so in that case, what I think you actually want to do, Enders, is use the technician tracking, which is, I think I have set up, so it's a little bit off topic, but let me just fire up a work order.
22:37
So I could select the clerk here, and that would allow me to do all of the work orders by that clerk.
22:46
But also, say that Service Sol here is my service manager.
22:52
And let's say we're helping Steve.
23:01
And let's say we add some labor or a kit.
23:05
I don't know if I have labor set up here, do I?
23:12
Yeah, I do.
23:14
This box, which is, you have to do some settings for this to come up.
23:19
Here it lets you pick the technician, which is also from the clerk list.
23:23
And then you can log the actual hours spent and their actual wage.
23:30
And there's quite a bit to this part, John, but are you using this?
23:36
Sorry, Anders.
23:46
Yeah, so likely if the labor is a big part of your business, like if you're doing welding jobs, this is probably going to help you get way more detail out of the work your guys are doing, or people are doing, and it can compare, for example, the actual hours versus the build hours, the actual build rate, the technician's wage versus the build rate.
24:10
There's a place for their notes right there.
24:12
This is probably the road you wanna go down.
24:15
And if you're using kits to construct the project here on the invoice, I think you may wanna consider, for one, the technician tracking, which you can, most labor items go like that.
24:32
And you may also wanna consider maybe a lookup word on that invoice, and you could have the lookup word be like, that's my tech, that's Frank's invoice that he worked on.
24:45
Although there's quite a bit of technician tracking stuff in the back-enders that you might wanna talk to a professional services expert to explore that fully.
24:57
Make sure you're making the most out of the software.
25:03
Now that it comes up, I suppose you could use a line item like that to track the sales of an outside location too.
25:11
And then you could just look at the sales of that particular line item.
25:21
So a few resources for you.
25:24
First, our next upcoming event is going to be in November.
25:28
It's going to be an in-person event.
25:30
We're really excited about that, hoping to see some of you in Texas at our Dallas showroom.
25:38
And we'll get more on that in just a moment, but I want to make sure that you know where to find some resources in regards to the things that we looked at today.
25:47
In your Windward Learning Academy, if you search by subtype, I believe you'll find lots of resources that would be useful in setting up the type of thing I'm explaining.
26:00
If you type in departments there in the tag, you'll find lots of resources that will show you what it's like if you do go down the road of buying multiple locations set up in the software, which is really what you wanna do for sure if you know that this marketing strategy is working.
26:21
A little more on this in-person event.
26:24
We're gonna do our inventory and accounting workshop in Dallas, which is a two-day event.
26:29
I think it'll be a full day the first day on the sixth, and then the second day we'll stop a bit early to open the floor for some Q &A, and if anyone needs to leave for a flight, we'll be done a little bit early on the seventh.
26:43
And we're gonna talk about all the really broad things that appeal to most of our customers.
26:48
Everybody needs to count their inventory, know how to keep it in check, and we're gonna talk about how to count, how to count with paper, how to count with scanners, and highlighting the sidekick scanning technology that's new this year for inventory counting.
27:04
How do I reconcile that against my accounting ledger?
27:13
And I'm sorry, my slides closed down on me for some reason there.
27:18
You can buy tickets to the workshop either through your account manager or you can also purchase it here on our website.
27:33
So if you go to sales at winwardsoftware.com, you're able to purchase not only professional services.
27:42
So Anders, this is the type of package you might wanna purchase through the website to explore the technician tracking, although you can find some stuff in the learning academy as well.
27:56
And here under training events, you can see our live workshop and the recordings from some of our old events as well.
28:04
And you can purchase the live event right here or by talking to your account manager.
28:11
So that's our presentation for today.
28:15
I don't see any other questions, although I'm open to some if anyone has one.
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