CategoryRetail management advice

In his 1960 book Reality in Advertising, Rosser Reeves, a respected US advertising executive, introduced the world to the concept of the unique selling proposition, or USP for short.

Reeves defined the USP in an advertising context:

1. Each advertisement must make a proposition to the consumer: buy this product, and you will get this benefit.
2. The proposition must be one that the competition either cannot or doesn’t
3. The proposition must be so strong that it changes consumer behaviour.

In the 1960s and 1970s, the concept of a USP evolved from being essential to advertising to being essential to business. Finding your business USP was considered mission-critical to businesses, especially retailers. Businesses drifted, however, and forgot about the importance of a USP.

Jack Trout tells us in his aptly titled book Differentiate or Die that a USP is mission-critical in business.

Differentiate or die. There is no doubt about the call to action in the title and no doubt about the consequences of inaction.

Yet many retailers, for the most part, have remained still in the face of an onslaught of competition.

Retail is tough today. There are fewer differences between competitors. Retailers are surrounded by competition, and it grows by the day. Yet many have remained still and have done nothing.

Smart retailers are reacquainting themselves with the writings of Reeves and Trout and learning about the mission-critical imperative of having a USP.

Differentiation could be service, product, location or a combination of these. Differentiation will most likely not be price, as anyone can easily match this.

Price is, after all, the last line of defence in any business battle. That said, there are some major price-focused success stories—Wal-Mart in the US and Bunnings in Australia, for example. This is rare in an independent retail situation.

To develop your USP, engage with your employees and other stakeholders. Take your time. Determine what you and your business stand for. Following open and honest discussion and debate, the USP, around which everyone in the business can willingly congregate, will emerge.

A good USP will not require an advertising campaign to communicate. It will become obvious through actions and decisions. By living the USP in every facet of the business, you will soon be seen as unique by shoppers, and this can drive excellent word of mouth and success for the business.

Here at Tower Systems we leverage our practical retail shop floor experience to provide advice and support for local small business retailers beyond our POS software.

Every retail business needs rules—rules everyone working in the shop is asked to follow; rules to guide behaviour.

Businesses without rules can function okay until that one time when someone behaves in a way that is unacceptable.

Here are some suggested rules that we have used in our shops over the years. They include some rules that we have seen others use successfully in their local small business retail settings:

1. Customers come first. Please treat them with respect. Appreciate them.
2. We value your opinion. If you think there is something we should stock that will sell, please tell us. If you think we’re making a mistake in running the business, please tell us. If you see a colleague misbehaving towards a work colleague, please tell us. If you see theft, please tell us.
3. This is a safe place. Thank you for helping us ensure that.
4. No staff members are permitted to serve themselves, ever. If you do purchase from the business, purchase from the customer side.
5. Any staff discount is not to be added to already discounted items unless a manager agrees.
6. If you want to buy something, you don’t take it off the shelf until you’re ready to pay for the item. NO setting items aside.
7. You’re not permitted to buy something on a staff discount for someone else.
8. No personal mobile phones at the counter.
9. No reading behind the counter.
10. No bags at the counter.
11. Don’t sit behind the counter.
12. When a sale is over, complete the sale. Shut the cash drawer. Don’t leave a completed sale on the screen.
13. Only a manager is permitted to remove money from the register during trading.
14. Never put anything aside for someone who calls, unless you know them and they are a regular shopper.
15. The computers in the business are not to be used for personal use unless approved by the owner or manager.
16. This is a retail business. Customers are our only source of revenue. Greet them with a smile. Thank them for shopping with you when they leave. This means that the shop floor is the hub of our operation. Your focus on the shop floor and our customers helps the business, and this helps you.
17. If there is anything we can do to help you enjoy working here more, please let us know.

Take a moment to consider your own rules.

Here at Tower Systems we leverage our own retail experience to help our customers, all local retailers, to run valuable ands enjoyable businesses.

One-percenters are small things—easy, small things you can do for a win in any retail business.

1. Check off invoices and price new stock on the shop floor, located to disrupt shopper traffic, so customers notice you doing it, and they can look at the new products. Pricing is part of in-store entertainment.
2. Never be out of stock of popular products. Use your software to predict sales, and order so you don’t sell out. We know from inventory / sales data that most retailers are out of stock of popular items 10% of the time and more.
3. Write the value of dead stock somewhere where all staff see it. Dead stock is stock that is not selling. The criterion for dead stock varies by business type. Update the value weekly for a whole business focus on reducing this. Dead stock has no benefit to any business.
4. Place two or three products at the counter for impulse purchase. Change them weekly unless they are selling well.
5. Have at least one product at the counter that people can touch, feel or taste if appropriate. Physically interacting with a product gets them closer to purchasing.
6. Change your front window display every week. The goal is to stop passers-by and have them notice you. If you don’t have a front window, change the front 2 metres of your shop every week.
7. Use social media to share knowledge and have fun. Show who you’re. Entertain.
8. Have a staff ‘product of the week’ in a good position, with a handwritten note from the staff member explaining the why.
9. Make sure the shop is happy, with good music, good smells, happy staff and fun product engagement opportunities.

Create your own list of one-percenters for your business—the easy wins that anyone can do at any time to improve the success of the business. The best one-percenters for your shop will depend your own situation, your own opportunities. Be sure to update the list regularly to keep it fresh and reflecting the season.

We are grateful to have local retail experience that produces us with practical ideas that can help local retailers thrive. Our retail experience is something that adds value to the POS software relationship we have with our customers.

While the real gold of what we learnt at the NRF Big Show, the largest retail / tech conference and trade show in the world, is being kept close for our internal use, we do have some takeaways to share.

The NRF Big Show 2025, organised by the National Retail Federation, attracted around 40,000 attendees and featured around 450 speakers across 200 sessions. The trade show hosted around 1,000 companies. It was a conference and trade show about tech in retail, for retailers.

This year’s theme, “Game Changer,” highlighted the pressing challenges and transformations within retail and urgent need for innovation and adaptability in a rapidly evolving landscape.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) was the hot topic in presentations and on vendor stands. Only a few companies on the trade show flow did not include AI in their key pitch. From the small and niche to the large, AI was the headline. Those without it felt out of date.

Key discussions at the event focused on the integration of AI across a range of businesses and covering a variety of uses:

1. In retail:
   1. Migrating back off functions to the shop floor.
   2. Faster and better-quality decision making.
   3. Elimination of complete manual tasks.
   4. New monetisation opportunities.
2. In software businesses:
   1. Faster development time, lower development costs.
   2. Faster, lower cost and more accessible customer service.

Conference sessions.

Workshops were packed, standing room only, often with 1,000 in attendance to hear from retailers and tech companies about their collaborative innovation and how it benefited the retailer.

AI driven inventory management was an often-covered topic. I sat in sessions on several different businesses (Dicks Sporting Goods, GAP clothing, Freedom Furniture (Australia), Men’s Warehouse, Academy Sports & Outdoors and more.

They covered how AI tools helped them cut inventory management labour costs, improve stock turn, make beneficial dynamic pricing decisions, have less out of stocks and increase sales by giving in-store associates easy access to information.

Most presentations talked about how third-party AI products were key to delivering these benefits, with the POS providing one of the data sources for the AI led innovation. On the trade show floor plenty of mid-tier POS software companies pitched embedded AI tools to help drive inventory related profitability. However, when asked two of these could not answer beyond a bland, canned, sales pitch.

The AI pitch from POS software companies to retailers in 2025 is reminiscent of the cloud pitch in the early 2000s except that the financial benefits of AI are tangible for all retailers, large and small – especially small given their limited resources and the easy access to the power of AI.

AI is more interesting to retailers today than cloud was (and maybe is) because it is ubiquitous, we see ourselves interacting with it daily.

A cohesive omnichannel solution pitch was common among all POS vendors. It was clear that integrations are key here, offering flexibility.

Ease of staff learning was also covered in several presentations with retailers noting that onboarding new staff had been dramatically reduced. At Dicks, for example, their goal was a POS UX facilitating training taking < 10 minutes compared to the previous 6 hours experience.

It was interesting hearing questions from retailers in the conference sessions. Most related to AI. These were usually from mid-size retail staff:

• What’s the labour cost saving from AI?
• How long does it take to experience saving from using AI?
• What’s the transactional cost of the AI tools?
• How hard is it to use the AI tools?

Each question has positive answers available. There was little contention or controversy. It left me with a feeling that for most AI was not a matter of if but more one of how soon can I.

…

Tower Systems was an early adopter in the AI space for small business retail. In 2022 we delivered terrific innovation and have enhanced this since. Our retailers are loving the time they save thanks to our Ai tools and the quality business decisions they can make with speed as well.

Here are 5 reasons why we think local small business retailers should embrace the Boxing Day Sale opportunity, even if Boxing Day Sales aren’t a big thing where you are:

1. Free marketing: You can piggyback on the big retailers’ Boxing Day Sale promotions without spending a cent.
2. Clear out old stock: Get rid of items you no longer want to sell.
3. Free up cash: Reclaim money tied up in old stock.
4. Customer love a bargain: Customers are always on the lookout for a good deal.
5. Retail reset: A successful sale can give your shop a fresh, motivated, and decluttered look.

There are no strict rules for a Boxing Day Sale. The only rule, my made-up rule, is about value. Make sure your prices offer genuine savings that are easy for customers to understand. The sale can start any time from the 26th through to the first week of January if you like.

Fill the front of your shop with deals, no matter what type of business you run.

Don’t waste money on fancy promotions. Simply email your customers, post on social media, and put up signs in your window. Keep it simple.

Keep your pricing simple too. Use terms your customers understand. Some might prefer half-price, while others might like fixed-price tables ($10, $25, $50, etc.) with items priced at twice the table price.

If you’re closed on Boxing Day, start your sale the next day. Don’t worry about the technicalities. Jump on the bandwagon, declutter, clean up, and make some money.

Our POS software makes it easy to run a Boxing Day Sale. It can help you:

• Create a sale catalogue with special prices.
• Track the success of your sale.
• Offer vouchers to new and infrequent customers to encourage repeat business.

A Boxing Day Sale is a great opportunity to attract new customers and boost your sales. So why not give it a go?

Here at Tower Systems we have helped plenty of our customers setup for Boxing Day this year with advice on creating and running a catalogue for the sale as well as other advice, including running a sale online through a POS software connected Shopify website – our catalogue sale settings can flow through to this.

Fast access to POS software support has been key for retailers this week. They are busy, which is terrific. We have ensured our team is available for handling calls as they come in, answering questions quickly, helping the retailers get on with doing business in the shop.

From the first calls early in the morning to the last calls late at night, our help desk team has been here helping small business retailers have a more enjoyable Christmas trading period.

While call traffic has been lower, because of Christmas in-store business, we have ensured we are ready to answer any query coming our way.

Have a terrific Christmas Eve. May your sales be the best ever!

Security is important in every business. Small business retailers using the POS software from Tower Systems have access to security settings for the management of access to business data and commercially sensitive functionality.  Here is a quick insight into some of these POS software security settings: