Your customer database (CRM) has the potential to create profits throughout the year, even as cooler temperatures descend upon the country. Remember that, as an established pool and spa business, the customers in your existing database have the highest potential for generating future sales.

Look at the functionality in your business software and drill down into your current customer database for new business. Find out who hasn’t purchased chemicals lately, who hasn’t had a service call or who has an older model spa. Identify the target ‘market’ within your database and then use direct mail, regular emailing, social media, and marketing to reach out and continue to bring these people into your retail location, online store, construction, or service department.

Using integrated software to execute target marketing tactics all in one place – versus in siloed systems – is a scalable way to maintain customer communication during what has been a hectic busy season.

RB Retail & Service Solutions provides an unlimited CRM customer database that supports your growing business, enabling you to maintain a cleansed database with the ability to combine duplicate customers. Build upon your mailing and e-mail lists by tracking all sales and customers through the system. Categorize customers through user-defined fields and create targeted advertising campaigns. With RB Retail & Service Solution’s swimming POS software, your sales and service information are all in one place, creating efficiency and ease, which are critical during busy season.

RB Retail & Service Solutions helps you build lists to target specific groups of customers, such as in-ground pool customers, who would be perfect to target for a safety cover or other winter cover.

Create customer types and generate lists of customers to offer them specific promotions to meet their needs. Examples might include targeting weekly maintenance customers with an algae prevention program or a “pool-closing” offer or pull a list of commercial accounts to target with an energy-efficient pool heater or variable speed pool pump.

These are just a few examples of product and service offers that will help pool and spa businesses sustain the unprecedented sales growth from this summer.

If you haven’t already done so, start a customer loyalty rewards program. You can even begin by giving a big ‘starting bonus’ to everyone that made a purchase over a certain dollar figure this summer. Call it a ‘pandemic loyalty rewards bonus,’ or something similar.

RB Retail & Service Solutions makes it easy to start, or jump start, a loyalty rewards program, as the system automatically assigns customer loyalty cards to easily track and build the purchase history of your customers. Use the loyalty card information to build additional lists for product, service and installation promotions. Use your loyalty rewards program to effectively retain customers. Personalized maintenance calendars and chemical tip sheets make the perfect handout to customers that will keep them coming back to your business for chemicals, patio furniture, BBQs, winter covers and more.

And don’t forget that any email promotion should include links to specific pages on your online store for 1-click purchasing!

As pool and spa companies struggle to meet customer demand, it’s not surprising that taking the time to follow up on leads has taken a back seat. In order to capture this low-hanging fruit, tracking and following up on leads is an easy way to sustain the sales growth from this past spring and summer. Separating current customers from sales leads allows pool and spa professionals to create ‘follow up’ actions for team members to target and track conversion or sales-closings.

Track leads, schedule sales calls, and send marketing mailings—then generate reports to ensure proper and timely follow up. Keep a handle on your sales team with sales performance reports for each employee and provide incentives to close sales and easily track commissions.

Being able to effectively track and convert sales leads using RB Retail & Service Solutions, is another underutilized software feature that will help pool and spa professionals sustain this summer’s sales growth this winter and into 2021.

As the summer rolls into the fall, pool and spa professionals have an opportunity to take the time to establish a schedule of routine counts by Product Line, Aisle/ Bin or Vendor. Cycle counts will keep your inventory accurate throughout the year and reduce the headache of doing one large count at the end of the year. If you haven’t already done so, now is the ideal time to purchase a scanner for your physical counts and teach your staff how to use it!

RB Retail & Service Solutions software makes it easy to organize inventory by assigning parts to departments and use automatic reordering to find the perfect inventory balance. This is particularly important as you consider adding new products to your offering—as another means of sustaining the exponential sales growth in 2020.

Perhaps this is the year to consider adding patio furniture, BBQs, outdoor heaters, fireplaces and gas stove inserts. Or maybe your service techs need to learn to install variable speeds pumps, automatic pool covers or offer a stain removal program to up-sell these products and services to the current customers in your database. Review the reporting options in your business software and look for trends that might point to offering new products and services that align with your current offering. This will ‘smooth out’ the seasonality of your business or simply become a one-stop-shop for all your customers’ outdoor living needs.

This time between seasons is the perfect time for employees to learn about a new product line.

The other often underutilized swimming POS software feature is management reports that can be pulled, analyzed and acted upon daily to help sustain the revenue generated this past spring and summer.

Types of Pool POS Reports

Inventory Reports

Inventory Reports are one of the most important reports that pool and spa professionals should refer to daily, whenever possible. Knowing which products sell and which do not sell is an important part of using your POS software to improve sales. Know what you always need to have on hand and what you should discount or discontinue. With RB, you won’t have to wait until an item collects dust on the shelves to know it isn’t selling.

Additionally, utilize the trend, profit, and product reports to make sure you are making the margins you need and have all of the products information in your database. The reporting modules in RB Retail & Service Solutions allow you to create automated purchase orders with your choice of product activity, product sold and seasonal scheme reports. Print purchase order and receiving reports, and track backorders, inventory cost discrepancies, warranty claims, and returned goods so you always have a handle on your inventory orders and returns.

Daily Sales Reports

Daily Sales Reports allow managers to view graphs and charts of sales by salesperson and revenue center, accounts receivable, open sales orders, booked and delivered figures, and sales by time of day on the RB Dashboard. There are many different sales reports available at a touch of a button, including average ticket sales per location or by revenue center, payment activity, or reports related to all transaction activities.

Employee Reports

Employee Reports provide features such as time clock reports that can make the payroll job much faster and easier. RB also calculates commissions paid on gross profits or retail sales and can be filtered by revenue center and category with multiple sort options. You can also see the number of pools and spas sold, clearance items and other product groups that are tracked by employees and are included in the commission report center.

Service Reports

Service Reports are another powerful software feature that provide service orders, itineraries, weekly schedules, daily schedules, and revolving service customers and history reports. These are integral parts of the service module that enables your business to operate at maximum efficiency.

Construction Reports

Construction Reports are invaluable this summer and moving into the fall, as demand for pools and spas has exceeded both the capacity to build and the supply available to meet customer desires. Job costing and budget comparison reports track the financial aspects of the jobs while progress management reports keep you informed of the physical aspects of all open jobs. RB Retail & Service Solutions even has the capacity to calculate the tax to be paid.

Even in these challenging times, our industry is thriving. Savvy pool and spa professions are taking advantage of the marketing, lead tracking, cycle counts and reporting features available in the RB Retail & Service Solutions Software to sustain the revenue stream that began in 2020 and propel them into 2021. Now is the time to learn more about the underutilized features available in the RB Pool & Spa business software program or consider implementing the RB Pool & Spa software if you haven’t already done so.