Using Smart Incentives to Drive Pro Shop Sales

Whether your pro shop customers are loyal members or one-time visitors, their buying habits provide valuable insights that can help shape effective sales strategies. Here, Mark Hopkins explores how understanding your audience and using Xpos to leverage strategic incentives can significantly boost revenue.  

 

“Are your best customers members or visiting golfers? Do they purchase high-value items twice a year, or buy lower-priced products more frequently? Understanding these patterns will help you to tailor promotions, choose a loyalty program, and create special offers to increase sales and enhance the overall shopping experience.

 

1.Loyalty

I am often asked by retailers how they can increase customer spend, as well as the number of transactions.  Introducing a loyalty scheme can be a good way to do this.

The key thing is not to build a system that rewards golfers for spending the same amount on the same product that they did last year.  You’ll just be giving away more money. Ideally, a loyalty scheme will encourage customers to spend more money across a wider range of products – specifically those hard to shift items, such as clothing and shoes. Try avoiding a flat scheme and see if you can vary the reward based on the product purchased, i.e., 1% on irons, 5% on clothing.

You could also change the rewards depending on customer type.  Every shop is different but, in general, loyalty schemes work better for clubs with a lot of visitors.  Pro shops with a high membership might be better to focus on customer service, marketing, upselling and sales techniques, and a membership discount scheme for slower-moving items.

 

2. Discounting

Ad-hoc discounting certainly serves a purpose in keeping members happy, but perhaps 2025 would be a good year to look at different ways to manage pricing. Structured discounting empowers your team and your members: Presenting clear benefits to customers, as well as giving you, and the team, time to think about how much margin you are prepared to lose.

Use Price Bands within Xpos to set a discount that ensures an acceptable margin for you and a specific date range for the promotion.  You can also set different discounts based on customer types, i.e., member or visitor.

Xpos reports will identify the worst areas in terms of left over stock, margin and turnover. If you have a calendar of events, you can plan all this in advance.

 

3. Commission

As with discounting, take time to research and discuss commission with your team. Not every staff member will be motivated by money, but when a commission scheme is done right, it can really make a difference. If you want to increase your average basket size and transaction values, getting the most from your sales team is key.

Commission is easy to set up and manage in Xpos and there are different options to choose from.  You can set commission for hard-to-shift products, such as clothing and shoes, and commission can be based on individuals or the whole team.

If a customer sees you purely as their hardware provider, your team should be upselling add-on goods, such as bags or clothing.  Similarly, shoppers who predominantly make low-value purchases can be encouraged to try a custom fit, or gapping session. As well as ‘upping’ conversations and incorporating these messages into your marketing, there are tried and tested incentives that will work and all can be managed in Xpos.

 

Which Xpos report should you use?

The Customer Spend Report in Xpos is an interactive report that helps you to analyse your best customers. You can set filters by date range, value, spend, the number of products, product group and brand.

 

 

Brian Cosgrove is Head PGA Professional at Newlands Golf Club, Dublin

Just before we started our shop refurbishment, we updated to the new Xpos cloud software. The next day, we launched a big clearance sale, which went exceptionally well.  We’ve found the new system very intuitive, more streamlined and efficient. The clearance sale was much easier to run than in the old Version 2.

In the past, if you were taking a sale with a combination of discounts and prices, we’d have to work out the totals manually, but now Xpos does it for you.  When it comes to transactions with multiple items, especially where there are anomalies including percentage discounts and sale rails, Xpos saves us a lot of time.

 

Mark Hopkins is a golf retail expert who has worked with hundreds of golf retail businesses over the last 20 years.  To discuss how your business can use Xpos to benefit from smart incentives, email Mark via hello@xpos.co.uk