Time is short and every day matters. Each day is 24 hours that cannot be reclaimed. I believe it is important to take the time to invest in yourself and know where you want to go. Below are a few things I do consistently for my own growth, and believe these are helpful for anyone.
When viewing the Inventory Turns and Inventory Yield in the Management Dashboard Report, it is very important to note the use of the word “Annualized”.
There are multiple methods for calculating turns that are acceptable for accounting. Two of the most common are Sales Divided by Average Inventory and COGS Divided by Average Inventory.
"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." ~Maimonides.
We take this approach in our day-to-day business life but we also apply this methodology when training our customers. Over the years we have trained tens of thousands ends users on our software.
Tony Henderson, Henderson Pawn, Pine Bluff, AR
Tony Henderson ran his pawn shop “old school” for years, opting to use the pen-to-pad method. Following a suggestion from his employee of 15 years, Tony decided to purchase PawnMaster. At this point, his employee was basically running the business for Tony, so he never felt it was necessary to take the time to learn all of the features available in PawnMaster. After his employee suddenly left, Tony was worried he was stuck with a system that he’d never be able to fully understand. After a call to Data Age, Tony received world-class training from our in-house training team and is now able to access all the reports he needs to make his business run smoothly while continuing to turn a profit.
I would like to thank all of the PawnMaster clients who attended our PawnMaster Training Event yesterday, at our Corporate Headquarters. This event was very well attended and it will spark more, which we will hold in several other cities for the convenience of our clients. The feedback has been amazing and our position around education, collaboration and training is one, which is being well-received and welcomed in our industry.
Now that the show season has started with a very successful Dixie 2016, Data Age/PawnMaster will continue to lead the way and advance the ball regarding education and training. We will continue to educate the PawnMaster family on the power of PawnMaster and all the powerful tools with the software but we will also do our part to educate the industry on current trends, marketing, sales, company culture and the buying market. On March 31, 2016 we are launching our first of what will become many PawnMaster user symposiums. This event, and the countless others to follow, will not only focus on continued training but it will see industry experts speaking to our PawnMaster clients.
Often times pawn customers are also general retail customers who will take advantage of your layaway program. When these customers come in to make a payment on their pawn, it can be helpful to remind them about their layaway so they can make a layaway payment at the same time. This Did You Know video covers adding a notice on the pawn payment screen, showing they have an active layaway.
In this Did You Know?, certified PawnMaster trainer Richard Lutz shows us how to create a call list for soon to be forfeited items. You can use this list to call your customers and remind them that their items are about to be forfeited. This goes a long way in providing good customer service and will often result in those customers coming it to either pick up their items or extend their loan.
Many of our customers use the text message module to notify their customers of payments due and forfeits as well as for marketing blasts. This helps build customer loyalty and can give you a competitive edge over your competition.
PawnMaster has expanded the search capabilities when using a ticket number to find a customer. By entering just one ticket number in the payment screen PawnMaster will now bring up a list of all active loans for the customer on that ticket number. This makes taking payments for multiple tickets much faster.