14 Mar 2024 | Windward Software
Speeding up Your Sales Process and Increasing Accuracy
This Windward Webinar focusses on strategies to speed up the sales process and increase accuracy. Key topics included creating morning workshops focused on barcoding, using quick sale screens, the importance of quick lists, creating purchase orders from point of sale, cloning estimates or templates, and using the recent purchases tab within Windward System Five.
- Scott Rockets made the presentation, with Kyle moderating.
- Scott introduced a series of webinars and workshops for the first quarter, emphasizing that the next week's workshop will be about barcoding.
- In the webinar, Scott shared tools to help speed up the sales process and improve accuracy.
- Quick sale screens were discussed as an important tool for improving sales efficiency. Some customers extensively use this tool, while some are unaware of its existence.
- Scott suggested that businesses dealing with lineup scenarios might find quick sale screens useful for their staff.
- The Quick Sales screen was introduced as a customizable user interface that allows staff to sell products via a touchscreen or mouse.
- Scott demonstrated how to design the Quick Sales screen using the setup wizard under Point of Sale devices.
- Kyle provided a use case for the Quick Sales screen, highlighting its usefulness for selling heavy items that are difficult to lift to find the barcode.
- The quick list was presented as a tool to help find things in the system faster and more accurately, reducing staff frustration.
- Scott presented a poll, which revealed that selling the wrong item is a common issue among the group, suggesting that barcoding could be a solution.
- Scott demonstrated a quick and efficient way to create a purchase order from the Point of Sale using the special orders feature.
- Cloning estimates or templates was suggested as a way to ensure consistency in invoices and avoid different salespeople trying to sell the same thing using different products.
- Scott demonstrated how to use the recent purchases tab to quickly add items that a customer frequently purchases to the invoice.
- The webinar concluded with a Q&A session where Scott answered questions about the features discussed.
0:05
All right. Welcome, everybody, to today's webinar. My name is Kyle. I'll be the moderator today.
0:10
Today's topic is speeding up your sales process and increasing accuracy and it's being presented by Scott Rockets.
0:19
There you go Thanks gals, and thank you everyone for joining us for today's webinar.
0:26
We're going to just give you a quick reminder here of the other webinars and workshops in our first quarter of presentations. So today, we're going to talk about speeding up your sales process. Increasing accuracy.
0:40
And Next week, we're gonna talk have a morning workshop. That's all about maybe one of the key ways. You might speed up your process, which is barcoding and all the things you can do with barcoding a little bit how you select your devices and so on.
0:54
Just a little bit more about that workshop, this is a four hour meeting next Thursday.
1:01
We're gonna go through what you can do with barcoding, what kind of hardware you need to purchase to make good use of the barcoding system How you can get barco's into your software How you can use it at point of sale and receiving counting and a few other things that are kind of nifty that you can do with barcodes.
1:21
So we'll hope to see you there.
1:24
Today, in our webinar today, we're going to talk through some really simple, hopefully, straightforward, little tools you can use that might just save you that one or NaN per sale, or lead you to the right area, or helped to make something more accurate.
1:44
And all of these are quite simple on their face, but each of them, you might find your own way to use it.
1:51
And we're going to start with something that some of our customers use extensively.
1:58
And some customers, I'm pretty sure, don't even know that it exists. So the quick sale screen.
2:05
So what this means is that there's A different interface than your typical interface in system five, for I just jump into it.
2:17
I would like to know from you guys, how many of you are it just in general dealing with a lineup scenario when you're operating your business?
2:48
It's interesting.
2:56
OK, I'm gonna share that.
2:58
So, It looks, actually, like, for the most part, that's not a common scenario.
3:06
So, it may be that some of these things I'm going to show you are more for your staff than for speed of getting them through the line.
3:21
So, the first tool, we're going to review is the Quick Sales screen.
3:25
Now, what this is, is a policy, a regular user interface, for running a sale, is a customizable, possibly touchscreen, that your staff can use to ring people through.
3:39
It enables you to do things such as create your own menu systems and create buttons to sell particular products, it works very well with barcoding, right? Or on its own and it works well with a touchscreen but you don't require a touchscreen you can still type and use your mouse.
3:59
Quite customisable, and that's maybe one of the main hurdles, of it, or Downsides, if you want, is that you have to do the work to build it.
4:07
So, I am going to just demonstrate that quickly And then show you where you can find it, should you want to pursue that.
4:17
Real quick, with that, with that quick feel, for screening the buttons that you were talking about, Another use case for items that are heavy bombs that you don't want your car, your sales staff to be lifting to find the barcode as well.
4:32
Oh, yeah. So let's see. Yeah, that's a great or that or even not even coming through the register either too big or just getting put on a truck somewhere maybe, yeah, That's true. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. So.
4:44
But probably quite a few use cases, we commonly see this deployed.
4:49
If you are fast paced retail, like a garden center, for example, however or or a liquor store is another common place it's used.
4:59
But I've seen it used in all kinds of places because of its flexibility.
5:05
You could really change your sales process quite a bit.
5:09
So here's an example of it, the quick sales screen.
5:14
Now, this is a, sort of a demo set.
5:18
And you can see there's certain buttons here that you would see normally when running a sale. Change the invoice type, well, that's, it looks different, but it's doing the same thing.
5:29
This P here is for parking the sale. So setting that aside can help a different customer while someone goes to pick something else out.
5:37
A link to the delivery calendar worked to the ship to tab of an invoice.
5:42
And things like commonly sold items, so here's an example of creating a little menu so that I can quickly sell these products by clicking a button with no product lookup kneaded whatsoever.
5:54
So this is fast, but another good reason for it is accuracy.
6:00
You don't have, you don't have to have staff who know part numbers.
6:05
To sell the things that you create this menu system for.
6:08
This is a very simple one, but you can make them more in-depth, you can make them come along the side here, or you can have them pop up in the middle of the screen.
6:19
So you can do all kinds of things with this screen.
6:23
This is a nice tidy interface that I have designed here.
6:27
I'm just going to show you where to find the designer, and then you might want to consider watching some videos in your Learning Academy about the designer, and, or getting some additional services from our professional services department.
6:40
Too, give you a hand in designing the interface, because there's a little bit to it.
6:48
So I am just going to exit without printing that sail.
6:56
And.
7:04
I'm into cash sales, but it takes some money.
7:09
If you'd like to pursue the design of that, you can find the designer in the setup wizard.
7:27
Scroll down to the bottom of your setup wizard, And under Point of Sale devices, you will see touchscreen support. Again, It does work well with touchscreens, but you don't have to use a touchscreen. You can still use your Mouse keyboard.
7:43
You can see I have it enabled.
7:45
And you can click this Edit global layout to get into the design area.
7:56
This is the designer.
7:59
It allows you to design different aspects of the interface.
8:07
There's, there's a little bit to it. We're not going to go through all of it today.
8:12
My main point for today's webinar is that this is accessible to you. It doesn't have to cost you money.
8:18
You can design a new user experience for your staff, helping customers which could help speed. It could also just make sure, like we did the example of these products.
8:29
Making sure they pick the right product or service. Or in Kyle's example, making it easier for them to sell something without knowing the part number or are trying to reach around and scan a barcode.
8:41
There's a lot you can do here, just keep that in mind as an alternative to your standard screen.
8:50
So, as an old, some of you might have, This is the default, actually.
8:56
In which case, this is the standard workflow.
9:05
The standard workflow has immediate access to all the bells and whistles of system five.
9:10
The touchscreen requires that you choose which features are accessible while you use it.
9:21
Another really handy thing that can help speed up your staff. And this is not just at point of sale, actually. This can help throughout your business. It's commonly overlooked. It's very simple to use. And it can really help you find the things in system five that you'd use every day for your staff use every day, and just make them more accessible. It's called the quick list, and it's the bar across the top of your screen.
9:44
I'm just going to quickly show you how to do this for yourself.
9:48
This doesn't require any technical knowledge at all, and it's a really easy way to get your favorite reports, or functions of the software all in one spot.
10:00
So you can see my quick list is along the top here.
10:06
Cancel out of here.
10:09
And if I want to add a button to this top list.
10:17
Pardon me, Click on your Navigator, then you'll see down at the bottom of the Navigator. It's a little hard to notice. At first, there's a customized button.
10:26
If you click on that, it will turn the screen screen gray here, and you'll be able to choose what you'd like to add to your quick list.
10:33
So let's say I'm working in the bookkeeping department, and I need to add.
10:43
Quick way to look at the transactions in a ledger, for example.
10:49
Do a non sales example.
10:52
I can select the report or feature that I like to use all the time.
10:56
Right, click my mouse, and I can add that to the quick list.
11:06
Now, you'll should visually see that relocate, and you can see there's a quick list menu here to retain that for my interface.
11:15
I want to be logged in as the person who needs it, and hit Save Changes, and now that's right here.
11:23
You can also do this for a group of employees, atlin time through a very similar workflow.
11:29
You hit the customize button, then you need your supervisor override. So in case you're not aware of how to do that, you come down to this bottom caray bar.
11:40
You right click your mouse in this box here.
11:45
And you click supervisor to override what you need to have access to. To do this.
11:50
You'll see that start flashing red down here.
11:53
This enables the multi user selection, which lets me pick back another report.
12:01
Let's say we frequently run a commission report, let's say, 10.
12:06
I can right click that, and add that to my quick list for multiple users, and I can pick who they are.
12:18
And then, save the changes.
12:22
That makes the change for a group of people, or for everyone.
12:26
A quick list, if you're not using it, is usually one of the ways you can really avoid people getting lost in the menu system, trying to look for and getting frustrated by, trying to find what they need to, either close the sale and move on to the next customer.
12:43
Same for the purchaser receiver, accountant, bookkeeper, They all have the tools they want to use every day up top.
12:50
You'll find frustration levels are lower.
12:54
You can move faster.
13:02
OK, so I actually have another question just to keep you guys on your toes.
13:10
How often do you have a problem where people sell the wrong thing? Customer walks out with the correct product, but the wrong skew is used.
13:41
OK, It looks like that's a fairly common thing among the group.
13:45
So when you think about the things we've just looked at, can I use the touchscreen interface or design to mitigate that. We'll talk about. You know barcoding is a good solution for that as well.
13:59
And part finding is, is also a good solution.
14:04
So, just keep that in mind as we go through things here.
14:12
Next, on our list.
14:19
Is this nifty trick.
14:21
So, if you're doing a lot of special ordering, then you're, we're not gonna go through the whole special order process today.
14:30
Though, We do have a workshop on that later in the year, and there's lots of Learning Academy content on that topic.
14:38
If you're using that process, there's a quick and easy way to create a purchase order, right from the Point of sale.
14:45
This is typically used in businesses where, if I'm the sales person, and I'm Rick, I'm helping a customer, I'm writing a word quarter for them.
14:54
It's also my responsibility to ensure that the product is ordered for my client.
15:01
So I want to create a separate Peele for that invoice. And it's a 1 to 1 ratio, maybe possibly anyway, of one PO for one customer, or one job is one. This is often used. However, you can use it in any sort of ordering setup.
15:17
It's just a quick way to create a PO from the point of sale.
15:22
It's kind of hidden in the menus here. This can be used with backwaters and special orders. So, we're going to do an example.
15:42
So, my example, let's suppose that Smith construction is building some properties, and I'm their go to supplier of appliances for those properties.
15:57
So, here, I'm going to sell a product.
16:04
And let's fix something we don't have, we'll sell this Kenmore here.
16:10
So I'm presented with the Out of Stock learning, and I need to special order this product or back order this product.
16:15
I'm going to special order and queue that up as normal.
16:24
If any of you are not using special orders, this is an excellent way to tie your, tie your sales process to your ordering process, to make sure the right people get the right product.
16:39
So now, you can see that, although the customer has ordered one of these, we don't currently have any stock.
16:45
And a special order has been triggered. So, this can be used to create purchase orders.
16:51
But if you want to create that, create that peel right now, you can do so from the Options button.
16:57
You can go over to Invoice options, special orders, and this is why I say you can use this with back orders or special orders.
17:10
If there was just a backwater on there, I could switch it to a special order real quick, especially if there's a whole bunch of them.
17:16
And then I can create a PO for all special orders.
17:19
So if I do this right now, the system will open appeal, and drop that kenmore right on the appeal.
17:32
If you, if it's suitable for your business, if this makes sense for your ordering process, this is a great way to make sure that that PO is created right away, while you're helping the customer.
17:44
And then you just need to make sure that it's sent off to the vendor, of course, it ensures that there is no disconnect at all, between the person selling the product and the person ordering it.
17:56
The only sort of downside of that is now you've got one Peale for each sale for meeting freight minimums and things like that.
18:02
Sometimes you want to consolidate orders, I've seen both sort of setups in different businesses.
18:14
Now, I can also do this with a back order, and it just looks slightly different.
18:20
We'll go through that again.
18:25
So let's say they, they want one more of these, but I'm in a business where we don't use that special order feature. We use the backward feature.
18:33
But in this case, I do want a special order, so I've got a back order here for this product.
18:38
I can do the same thing here, and go.
18:44
Under Invoice Options, Special orders, and I can change it to a special order, and you can just imagine if I had 10 of these things, it would do this for me for all 10.
18:56
And then, I could create the PO. Now, in my example here, I'm gonna end up with two POs.
19:05
Realistically, you would just do one PO after you finished all the lines there.
19:14
It's likely that that conversation may generate a question. We're going to stop for questions here in a few minutes.
19:27
Cloning estimates are templates. Now, this is used in a lot of businesses where, in a similar situation, it's often used when I deal do business with a contractor. They're building 30 homes or 30 apartments.
19:42
And really, most of these have the same package commonly used in the lighting industry.
19:48
And this allows you to have a starting point that has certain things on it all the time.
19:54
So, for example, Layers or certain products, like you, maybe you have a package that eat it, but it's along its 20, 30 lines long. And rather than re writing that every time or using a kit, you create an estimate which you can then clone.
20:13
And what this can also help with a void different salespeople trying to sell the same thing, but using different products to do it.
20:24
And it can avoid inconsistencies in invoices between, say, two jobs for the same customer.
20:37
So its speed and its accuracy in this instance. So, first, you'd need to create an estimate. So, let's, let's just do that.
20:50
Estimate doesn't require a customer in a template setup, you don't want a customer usually, Well, you could if the invoice is always for the same customer.
21:07
And I'm just going to throw some product on here.
21:16
Stick with the appliances theme.
21:28
So I have a couple products. Now, let let's suppose that this is a standard package that I sell for every unit in a complex, or it's just a really common combination of products that I sell over and over winter ...
21:43
on my RVS, or I'm trying to think of other other examples.
21:49
I usually go with it with contractors, building homes, you think any examples kyl where people are doing the same, say all the time, then come to mind.
21:59
Yeah. So. So what might the building materials that the business like shed packages and that can slow?
22:06
Yeah, yeah, so anytime that you want to recreate it, so then what I'm gonna do here is I'm going to go to the comments section and I'm going to make it so that this estimates easy to find.
22:21
I'm going to use what's called a lookup word.
22:24
And I'm going to create a new lookup for it. But you can see I have several that I use.
22:33
And this one I'm just going to call a temp template.
22:41
So now this invoice has a search term or a lookup word attached to it.
22:48
Then I could, I could be doing things like adding layers, or a specific products or services to it, that I want to clone every single time.
22:58
So, sometimes this gets quite in depth, but now I'll just show you how to clone it.
23:03
I'll exit out of this.
23:06
And if I want to use that same package for another transaction, instead of going to new sail, I can go to Edit sail.
23:17
I'm going to use this Advanced search, and I'm gonna use the Lookup word field here.
23:25
And search by, I look upward, there is my estimate. rather than opening the template, I wouldn't want to do that.
23:32
I want to duplicate the template by using the Duplicate button up top. Now I can make sure I've sold the exact same products.
23:44
But of course, after you do that, you would need to go into the Customer tab and, or the Ship To Tab.
23:51
Just a note there.
23:51
If you are dealing with builders', you would probably in the original estimate, put in the main contractor customer and clone that every time, and then just change out the ship, too.
24:05
So if you're in lighting and you're not doing this, it's probably a huge time saver for you, You built the whole package once, and then you clone it and clone it, clone it, and then make tweaks to it after the cloning process.
24:23
So, that's cloning.
24:32
This is a similar tool. This is just an easy way to take commonly purchased products that your customer likes to buy and drop them onto the invoice quickly. So, it allows you to answer the question, oh, well, I bought this last time and loved it, quickly and efficiently.
24:52
They'll open a new sail.
24:55
We're one of my important clients here.
25:13
We'll head over to the recent Purchases tab, and you can see all the things they've purchased, how much of them than they have purchased. And you can pick from the list.
25:23
The products that you want to purchase again, and simply add them to the invoice is just one of those features that people maybe just don't know about.
25:32
It's easy to use, there's no particularly, no setup really required. And it lets you find what they bought last time, really quickly.
25:49
So, if you're looking to find More help on the things I talked about today, then, this is where you're going to find free, resources.
25:57
In the learning academy, the tags I'd suggest, you use, and in the learning academy, is most easily searched using tags. Use quick list. If you're interested, or touchscreen, if you're interested.
26:13
And the recent Purchases tab, and it just in general, a lot of these things, that I've shown you, they may not, some of them may not have a whole video about them in the Learning Academy.
26:24
So you might also find in the Learning Academy, if you hit the need Help button, on the left here, you can see you can go through the menu items and find specific documentation about the feature. That's also quite helpful.
26:39
And I was just going to say a few words about our upcoming workshops here.
26:43
Thanks Scott, you're going to hear twice, right? You already heard from Scott, you're gonna hear me now just remember that we have the Essentials of Barcoding workshop next week so you can get signed up for that if you're planning to attend. There's a short little minute and a half a video right on the brake on the landing page there at limburg software dot com slash events. This event is to 299 bucks. You just run to the next slide, there's that.
27:19
Then, if you want to get the entire Get Profitable Bundle, there's, there's a number.
27:24
Oh, the workshops that are bundled up together. So you see, you save the original price on, that was $750. Now, since there's a couple of recordings, you can get the Live Events for the first two, that have already passed. We did reduce the cost of that. We're not going to put it into today's recording, so you don't have to check it out online. But do you do go to ... dot com slash events. There's a button right there. That'll get you to the March our workshop, which is the barcoding and then of course, that's gonna get you.
27:57
There's all the pricing right there.
27:59
So yeah, that's the current rates, the pricing, me may change later on then we do have the next quarter's events coming up as well, So please do go on over there and check out all of the great things that we have to offer at sales dot windward software dot com.
28:21
All right, I think we're ready for Q&A.
28:25
So, as we go on, let's go ahead and, um, get some questions in there. There was a comment that the things go up faster for you. I think your computers working a little slow there today.
28:42
Throw your questions in the Q and A And then, oh, go ahead, and then get them answered here real quick.
28:49
We do have two of them for you already. Scott, one is about the recent purchases.
28:55
We saw how you could select the individual items there, just the way to do the entire purchase stems from the fact that you could you could do that for the template, but can you do it for the entire influences? Let's try it from the start.
29:14
Good question.
29:16
I don't think I know.
29:18
So, we'll just try it.
29:19
So, I do know that you can do it from the, the customer.
29:24
Yeah.
29:25
Well, here, let's try it. So, we'll just open up a new recorder for.
29:31
Well, these guys have a lot of, Well, that's OK. They have a lot of products.
29:48
Usually, you can just pick.
29:52
This top, it doesn't look like it.
29:58
OK, let's do it. Let's do it from the customer record, which is worth showing as well. I think so, let's suppose.
30:07
But I'm going to do this, not from the invoice, but create an invoice from the customer's record. That's another way to, to access the recent purchases, as Kyle pointed out.
30:16
So if we go into customers, and we'll try someone with fewer. Yes.
30:23
So, this doesn't bogging down. We're going to do Eugene here.
30:38
Right, All right, now it's going to find a tab.
30:46
Purchases tab here, under.
30:52
This isn't exactly the same as the next bit. Is the invoices tab there?
30:58
Right, so if you just want to clone a previous invoice, you can do that here.
31:04
And if the template is tied to the customer, like the template we saw, then it would appear here as a template as well. So, I can duplicate something from here just like that.
31:17
Find out which sale it is.
31:24
Thanks.
31:26
Yeah.
31:30
Also, alternatively, alternatively, there's also this purchases tab.
31:35
That's really the same, isn't it? So if we go here, it indicates which invoice number it's onto. So, food kinda.
31:44
We had a little bit of overlap, I guess tape, so if we, here, you're going to see the product they purchased over a timeframe?
31:52
Let's try that.
31:54
Maybe I picked the wrong customer here.
31:57
Yeah, that's my problem.
31:59
Oh, yeah. I didn't even think about that. That's interesting. I bought something last year.
32:05
Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
32:07
I probably don't have enough data inherit for that to be, but the last couple of months, I will.
32:11
So, there's the things that Eugene purchased in that timeframe, sell it to you, really nail it down, and you can add the selected here, though, as to a new invoice or an open one.
32:32
So, that's another way of really dealing with the same, same issue.
32:39
Yeah.
32:41
OK, so, there was a, There was a question from John that says, Are you guys using the cloud based version of when we're on these demonstrations?
32:50
We're not using the cloud based version when we're, in fact, that we are just using the a demo on Scott's machine. And when we do webinars, there is a lot of software running on a machine at the same time in order to do the webinars so that's kind of like contribute to the slowness that we're seeing here.
33:10
I made a comment. Not a question, just wanted to say how.
33:15
So how she loves, how customizable the quick sale screen is, it's made things a lot faster for them.
33:22
Boom! And then there was another one here.
33:25
When you generate the POs, couldn't you just leave it open and then add to it later?
33:33
Yeah, absolutely.
33:35
So you can, you can end up with too many POS open sea or purchaser, depending on your structure, if you've got a purchaser, or if you have purchasers, you want to talk internally about how you're going to do that.
33:51
As I have seen people who like that cloning and like this special ordering, for example.
33:57
And they are all using the special ordering.
34:01
Then, some of them, somebody, I'll throw one on their own, Peale, but not send it.
34:05
And then the same product can accidentally get ordered by the purchaser. So you really need to have a baked in process does the purchaser authorize the purchases?
34:16
Or did the salespeople take responsibility for the ordering themselves, which I've seen in some, something that's kind of an internal decision to make, how we want to do it.
34:28
So some companies just do a, an order day and then they consolidate everything on that day and send it so that they can make break minimums.
34:37
Yeah.
34:38
So that's another, ah, I don't know if I'm well positioned to demonstrate this, but another workflow I've seen is where people do on the sale. When they're helping people, they just use the back order button, so that the sales clerk doesn't have to put in any details or hit, you know, go through the special order, dialog box, they just use backwaters, Yeah.
34:58
But then they use this.
35:03
to flip them all to special orders.
35:07
It's going to get at the end, setting up before.
35:10
you could actually show it, but yeah, and like so for example, say I have a template, but everything on my template is most likely out of stock all the time. Like I always order it. job by job.
35:22
Open the template, flip it to a work order.
35:25
And if I'm my default is special ordering, every line has to be addressed.
35:31
If it's back ordering, then you don't have to do that.
35:37
The required orders report to you in case anybody's just new to this special ordering thing.
35:45
A little extra tidbit it's this report right here.
35:49
If you're not creating the Peale right away, but you are special ordering your back ordering, It's this report that will help you build your POS, the required, or report.
35:58
I won't go into detail there, because it's outside of our scope today, Point you in the right direction. Yeah, We're actually already overtown anyway, So yeah.
36:07
We had, we had some great questions today.
36:11
Is there anything else that you wanted to add at the end here, Scott? or? Good? Now that's great. That's what we wanted to cover today, Thank you everyone for coming.
36:21
We'll look forward to seeing some of you, I hope, at the bar coding event next week.
36:26
And if not, at the webinar next month, Have a great day.
36:32
If it works correctly, once we end this webinar, there should be a little video from Scott right after, so thanks for attending everybody.
36:41
Thank you, everyone.
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