We would like to extend an extra special thank you to our partners and customers who have contributed to our blog this year to help us put out valuable information.
1. 7 Habits of Highly Successful Pawnbrokers
- Keep Compliant Using Required Fields: In most areas of the world, collateral lending is highly regulated, and failing to abide by those regulations often results in heavy fines and punitive actions. One of the easiest ways to ensure that your employees are gathering all of the data needed for police reporting is to set required fields so a pawn or buy cannot be completed without all of the required customer and item information.
HOW TO: Setting the parameters is as simple as going to Admin >Store Setup>Customer Required Fields and Item Required Fields.
BONUS TIP: Keep in mind, it may be tempting to make Model and Serial Numbers required but items such as jewelry often don’t have these and the employee will have to enter “None” or “NA”. Keep reading…
2. Bullion and Coin Fraud on the Rise
BE THE BUYER (not the seller) – Put yourself in your customers’ shoes. Think about a time you bought something on eBay. What process did you go through? How did your experience make you feel?
When you think like the buyer, you can “speak” to that person.
As a buyer, we go through 3 phases:
- SEARCH
- REFINE
- BUY
- Search –The default search setting on eBay is “Best Match”. Most buyers don’t change that so let’s talk about how to make your item “Best Match”-worthy. As a buyer, think about the terms you would use to search the item you’re going to be selling. Start there, with your title. You only have 80 characters, so make good use of them! Keep reading…
4. How to Create a Bulk Item in PawnMaster
One of the most frequent questions I get when doing training on inventory management is, “What’s the difference between a “Bulk item” and “New item?”
For me, the best way to approach this is to think of a “Bulk item” as a place where similar items that will all be sold at the same price, are located. Whereas, “New items” are a specific size, style or model of items that will be restocked over and over again.
So let’s look at some examples of each: Keep reading…
One of the most frequent questions I get after a shop has been using PawnMaster for a while is, “How do I undo a payment?”
Let’s face it, we all make mistakes now and again. Perhaps we are in a hurry and we accidently select the wrong customer. Or the customer has multiple loans and they change their mind as to which loan they want to pay on. Whatever the reason, it’s time to undo a payment. Keep reading…
7. 5 Helpful Hints for Pawnbrokers – Volume 6
There’s an old adage about advertising that I still remember to this day:
Probably half of the advertising dollars you spend are wasted…and you don’t know which half it is.
So instead of frustrating myself more, I stopped advertising and focused on my employees. I became the sole responsible party for all new employees from the initial interview of a CSR (break-in employee) to managers and supervisors. I knew what kind of people I wanted working for me and the only way that could happen was to control the process. Keep reading…
9. Glossary of BSS (Buy Swap Sell) Terminology
Buying and selling online is becoming very popular and lucrative. In fact, Facebook recently launched its Buy/Sell feature to accommodate this development. It is a huge opportunity for retail operations to sell more product. But before you get into it, there is a whole new language you’ll need to understand so you don’t miss out on any opportunities.
FS – means “For sale”. Keep reading…
10. 5 Helpful Hints for Pawnbrokers – Volume 1
1. Use Facebook. If you don’t have a business page for your pawnshop, get one. Use incentives in the store to generate “followers” on your page (i.e. give a free DVD for a follow). Post everything you can in the Facebook Marketplace. Use the “boost” feature on Facebook to promote high dollar items or store events/sales. The ability of Facebook to profile its users and generate qualified customers to you is priceless, literally. Keep reading…
