When we think of retail, we think of its two main parts: physical storefronts and online stores. Plenty of successful retailers have both, but most don’t have them all figured out. Many have in-store and online channels that don’t talk to each other. They spend hours syncing their data—only to still lose a sale because their T-shirt sizes weren’t accurately reflected in their in-store inventory, and now it’s taking too long to check if it’s available online.
While these challenges frustrate many retail businesses, they also present an opportunity for you as their partner. According to the US Census Bureau, more than 80% of consumer spending still happens offline. If you’re only equipped to support brands that sell online, you’re missing out on a huge market that could use your commerce services.
In a recent webinar, retail partners Mike Riess from Riess Group and Mark Perini from ICEE Social shared how Shopify POS has helped them win new clients and grow their business. Ahead, you’ll learn four expert strategies you can take back to your own partner agency.
1. Extend Shopify POS to gain new clients
Just like the Shopify ecommerce platform, Shopify POS was built for developers. Because it’s fully extensible, there’s functionality that can be built into just about anything a retail client needs.
For example, Riess Group has a client that sells school uniforms. As Mike explains, nobody knows what khakis their kid needs for their specific middle school. To help make this experience easier, Riess built a POS extension that tells parents and other guardians which uniform options match their school’s requirements and which won’t work.
Advice from Mike Riess, Riess Group
It’s these sorts of projects that lead to additional work for Shopify partner agencies. If retailers know that you’re a leader in the POS space, they’re going to come to you with their business. And after you’ve done a great job with their POS, they’ll often ask you to help with their ecommerce platform as well.
“We win a lot of business on the ecomm[erce] side that we may have not had [without] that POS expertise.”
— Mike Riess, Owner at Riess Group
Use apps to as a way into the ecosystem
Shopify POS has plenty of functionality built in, but retailers often have specific industry or business needs that they’re trying to meet. What this means for partners is that the Shopify POS landscape is wide open for developers to build new apps and for agencies to get noticed by new clients.
“When you think about some of the largest app developers on the ecomm[erce] side, they blew up because Shopify blew up in terms of market share. What we’re seeing now is [that] the point of sale space is really burgeoning and scaling extremely quickly.”
— Mike Riess, Owner at Riess Group
Specifically, Mike points to an opportunity for restaurants and coffee shops. There wasn’t an app in the Shopify app store for restaurants more than a few months ago, and there’s still room to build in that sector. “The sooner you can get that person onboarded, the app installed, and [start] collecting revenue … you get the first-mover’s advantage.”
As an agency partner, there are two main strategies for monetizing POS apps:
- Build custom apps for clients, then add them to the app store
- Customize apps you’ve already built for specific client needs
Advice from Mark Perini, ICEE Social
Both arms of a partner agency can benefit from these strategies. The application-based business arm can handle migrations where clients need you to build new apps, while the services arm can benefit from implementing those same apps with new clients that find them on the Shopify app store.
“The [Shopify] app store is just such a great hub to grab new customers.”
— Mark Perini, Founder at ICEE Social
Advice from Mike Riess, Riess Group
New work can come from a client who’s found one of your apps on the Shopify app store. Often it’s close to what they need, but not quite there. That leads to a new project, and if your agency does a great job, it can expand into additional services.
2. Take the stress out of inventory management
For businesses that have both physical retail and online stores, inventory can be a hassle that takes up time and resources. By migrating them to Shopify POS, those retailers can instead manage all their inventory data from one unified place.
“The number one reason we have clients move over to Shopify POS is the omnichannel inventory. Being able to go to the backend of Shopify and see the inventory across multiple locations all in the same span—that is enterprise-level software in the best-case scenario.”
— Mark Perini, Founder at ICEE Social
For example, ICEE Social worked with a luxury retailer that was just two weeks away from hosting a sample sale. The sale was set to happen both online and in-store, but on their instances of Magento and IBM AS/400, they had to swap between manually taking inventory from the online store warehouse and the physical storefront. ICEE Social rushed to migrate the retailer to Shopify POS, unifying their inventory onto one system. In the end, the sample sale brought in over two million dollars between online and POS.
“That was the light bulb where [I knew] if we could do this [migration] in two weeks for this huge retailer and have them be so successful … then we could use our small, nimble team to do this on a much larger scale.”
— Mark Perini, Founder at ICEE Social
When retailers try to get inventory management right, it feeds into the larger question of simplifying all the operations that go into selling in-store and online. A platform like Shopify POS that offers a single source of inventory also gives retailers a single source for orders, customers, and reporting. With everything in one place, it becomes easier to design more effective and targeted marketing campaigns that match up with customers’ buying behaviors.
Give the gift of hassle-free gift cards
For retailers everywhere, gift cards can be one of those sneaky headaches in commerce. Whether it’s the third-party costs associated with managing them, or getting them to work across multiple store locations and online, retailers struggle to get it right.
By migrating these clients to Shopify, these headaches go away.
Pitch these Shopify gift card benefits to your clients:
- They work online and in-store, across any number of locations.
- They’re free (yes, actually free.)
Advice from Mark Perini, ICEE Social
We’ve all experienced the scenario where we receive a gift card and it can only be used in-store. Or worse, it can only be used in the particular store where it was purchased. Some enterprise-level companies are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to integrate their systems to avoid this problem. Instead, encourage your clients to open up a Shopify store. They can have a gift card set up in 15 minutes that works across 10 locations and online.
Advice from Mike Riess, Riess Group
In some cases, retailers pay fairly exorbitant fees for third-party systems that work across different platforms, and those fees can really add up. For example, some retailers pay up to 9% on every gift card, meaning that $0.90 for every $10 goes to the third-party gift card provider. By moving to Shopify, you don't have to worry about integrating any other system. You can simply use Shopify gift cards, and it’s free.
3. Show your clients you truly care
Sure, the features and capabilities of Shopify POS are largely what sets it apart. But Mike and Mark both agree—if you want clients to work with you, you also have to be a partner agency that cares.
To connect with your clients, you’ll need to:
- Ask questions about both POS and your clients’ specific needs
- Build your clients’ trust by taking a genuine interest in their success
Advice from Mike Riess, Riess Group
Working with the Shopify POS solution is easy because you’re selling a great product. But to be a successful partner, you need to put in the hours to understand how it works—especially with day-to-day activities like managing inventory. For example, when businesses with multiple locations need to order more stock, you’ll need to know how they do replenishment orders. By taking the extra time to understand every little process, you’ll set yourself up to be a better partner for that client.
Advice from Mark Perini, ICEE Social
Clients can feel when you’re actually trying to help them. If you have the knowledge about the solution, and you’re excited about how Shopify POS can help a retailer succeed, they can sense that enthusiasm and will adopt it themselves.
“There’s a $4.5 trillion market TAM that we can all concur together, and you just have to be ready when the next POS opportunity is there. The only way is to really deeply understand POS.”
— Mark Perini, Founder at ICEE Social
4. Lean into where Shopify is headed
Partners help retailers switch to Shopify POS for the operational or omnichannel reasons we’ve discussed, but with the significant moves that Shopify has made into retail and unified commerce, there are also more philosophical opportunities for partners to capitalize on.
Philosophical reasons for partners to bet on Shopify POS:
- Shopify’s tech innovation stays ahead of the curve.
- Shopify is a moat for unified commerce.
- Migrating to Shopify means “getting on the rocket ship.”
Advice from Mike Riess, Riess Group
Other enterprise platforms charge higher price tags for often worse functionality. Because Shopify is an amazing software product company, and because businesses have seen how well Shopify has handled ecommerce, when they decide to migrate, they’ll know that the technology will stay ahead of the curve.
“Shopify didn't stumble into this crazy market share on ecomm[erce]. They're a great company that builds great products, and they're not going to rest until they have that same crazy market share on point of sale.”
— Mike Riess, Owner at Riess Group
There’s also the idea that Shopify POS is going to help you build a moat around your clients. What sets Shopify POS apart is that it’s always been built with Shopify as the core platform and acts as a natural extension of it. There’s no need to use middleware to tie any solutions together, so instead of having three systems, on Shopify, they only need one.
Advice from Mark Perini, ICEE Social
Sometimes you have to assume that your clients haven’t done the comparative analysis of Shopify POS versus its competitors. By explaining the features and where Shopify is going in the future, you’re essentially telling them to get in the rocketship that Shopify is building. This is a nice way to frame up the benefits at the end of sales calls.
Make Shopify POS a part of your partner agency strategy
Retailers that manage both brick-and-mortar and online stores are looking for ways to make point of sale work for them. By taking the opportunity to strengthen your knowledge around Shopify POS, you can join the partner ecosystem, win these clients, and help them with challenges like managing their inventory and making the solution work for their specific needs—all while growing your own business.
