Point of Sale materials are one concrete way to help operators offset expenses and increase orders of your product in their restaurants. It also helps lock the customer into your product and protect against distributor substitutions. Common POS items that manufacturers provide include table tents, posters, menu inserts, menu boards, window clings, danglers, and counter cards.
Covid has caused operators to rethink their menus and many need new marketing materials as they reopen their dining rooms to full capacity. Now is a great time to incorporate POS into your marketing efforts.
Incorporating Custom POS in Your Sales Strategy
There are many ways custom POS can be incorporated into your sales strategy. Here are a few examples:
- Give POS to new customers that agree to order a certain number of cases or pounds.
- Use POS as a rebate option to operators that have met certain purchase thresholds.
- Make POS a reward in your Loyalty Program.
- Create mock-ups for a sales call to demonstrate how the product would look in their operation.
- Provide brokers with a printing budget to use with their most promising opportunities.
- Bundle a POS offer with a product trial offer and provide to DSRs when you secure a new slot.
Creating Customizable POS Materials
There are several ways to approach creating custom POS materials. If you are just offering the program to a few large customers, you can work with an artist to get them developed. If you are going to work with smaller street customers or offer POS as a broader program, you are going to want a system that allows sales and brokers to create the custom materials themselves.
The good news is that these systems already exist. Most systems start with a template and allow the user to select an image of the promoted product, select or type in a headline, add copy, and have options to add a price and logo if desired. The artwork is then sent to a printer or downloaded into a print-ready file to provide the customer. The best systems also include budget tracking, automated approval emails, and management reports. Most importantly, it needs an intuitive interface for sales that requires little or no training to use.
Menu Allowance
For manufacturers who do not want to invest in a POS creation system, a menu allowance has many of the same benefits. Menu allowances let operators create their own POS materials and the manufacturer helps offset the cost for materials, provided they meet certain branding criteria, and the operator purchases a minimum number of cases. Functionally, it works like a rebate with the operator providing copies of the marketing materials and proof of product purchase.
If you want to further explore how custom POS or a menu allowance might help close more new business for your sales team, call us at 877-424-8725 or fill out our contact us form with any questions and to learn more.