Are you maximising Beacon to get the most out of your business – Part 3

There are two ways you can increase the total sales at your Service Station. 

You can increase the number of customers coming through the front door, or increase the total spend of your existing customer base.  Today we focus on the latter, increasing your site's average basket buy.

 Essentially, there are two ways you can increase your Service Station's total sales:

• Increase the number of customers coming through the front door, or

• Increase the total spend of your existing customer base

The latter is known as your customer 'basket' size.  Today we will learn how to monitor this value and also go over some tips on increasing your average basket buy.

Increased shop sales is not the only advantage to a higher average basket size.  A higher average basket means a higher stock turn over, this should result in less write offs for out of date stock.

How do you check you current average basket size?

Beacon keeps track of a range of Customer and Sales statistics, these can be found on your Day Sheet Report.

You can access the Day Sheet Report through Reports > Sales Reports > Day Sheet Report

Then double click on the month and select the Shift Rec/range of Shift Recs you would like to report on. 

The Customer and Sales Statistics can be found on page 2

Sales Statistics

For the above example you can see that the overall average sale for this site is $34.89. For fuel only sales the average is $56.37, Shop only sales the average is $20.13 and Shop & Fuel sales have an average of $58.85.

How do I increase my average basket size?

There are many things you can do to try to increase you average basket size, we have detailed a few tips below but you also may be able to get more guidance from your Buying Group.

• Maximise your promotions

  Focus on promotions that require purchasing multiple items rather than just giving a discount on a single item. 

  
  

  For example, set up a promotion where the customer needs to purchase a Pie, A drink and a chocolate bar in order to get the discount rather than selling a single chocolate bar for a discounted rate.

  
  

  If you are not already part of a buying group they will be able to help you this, they can even get you a special rate for items that are on their promotion schedule.
  

• Ensure Staff are upselling promos

  When a customer purchases an item that is on promotion, a pop up will appear on Beacon POS asking if the customer would like to purchase the other items within the promotion. 

  
  

  For example, if the promotion is Buy 2x Coca Cola 600ml for $8.00, if you scan a single Coca Cola 600ml the POS will ask 'Does the customer want to purchase 1x Coca Cola 600ml for $x more'. 

  
  

  

  
  

  We find sites that follow this practice have a higher Upsell conversion, which leads to a larger average basket size

  
  
  
  

• Maximise your store layout and use merchandising to your advantage

  The layout of your store and the way you display impulse items can have a huge impact on your sales.  Having impulse items set up at the counter and training your staff to ask each customer if they would like to purchase one of the impulse items at the end of each transaction will increase the sales of these items.

  
  

One of the most crucial parts of trying to increase your average basket buy is getting your console operators on board, encouraging them to upsell promotions and impulse buys will make a considerable difference to your progress.  It may be worth setting a team goal for upsell conversions or average basket buy for your team for the month to keep everyone invested in your goal.

You will also find that your Buying Group will have done a lot of research on increasing your average basket buy, if you are having trouble increasing this value or you would like more tips we would definitely recomment reaching out to your Buying Group for further assistance.