The short answer is “Making a product that will help liquor stores win now, and 10 years from now is important to us. We don’t skimp on important stuff.”
Here’s what not skimping looks like:
1. We spend more money. Who does more R&D, Toyota or Mitsubishi? Who has more highly trained people, BMW or Chrysler? We spend a significant portion of our revenue on improving Cloud Retailer for the liquor industry.
2. We want Small Business to have the best tools. If we charged what our software/support was worth, only retailers just this side of Big-Box could afford our system. Our Dual Pricing program puts it in the hands of the people that we’d rather see win, at very little expense to their individual consumers.
3. We have 10, MN based, highly technical personnel at our offices. People that solve and even prevent issues for the liquor stores we serve. We don’t like turnover. Turnover means bad service to you.
Our ‘take home’ from a Dual Pricing habitat doesn’t pay for even half of one of these people. Example – A previous liquor store owner (who one of our customers acquired his store) was amazed seeing how we handle and resolve our customers’ concerns. With his old POS company he had 50 open support tickets. He only got 1 call back from his support team and was asked to pay $250 (1 ticket). That POS company was going to give our customer 2 years of free service to not switch to Cloud Retailer at his new store. He chose to deploy Cloud Retailer again because of the premier service we deliver. This comes at no cost for Dual Pricing. We don’t skimp and so thereby deliver exceptional service on the things that are critical to you. Great support doesn’t happen by accident; it requires a significant investment.
4. Our priority is to have you “up” processing transactions 100% of the time at a second faster than the other guys. We have built a product and support team to make that a reality. Faster transactions saves you labor and that simply costs us more to deliver that.
One of our customers switched and that one second saved them 21.4 hours of labor a month! (8 store chain, doing 77,000 transactions)
5. On a $25 transaction, the difference between 2.5% to the customer and instead 3.5% to the customer is .25 cents. The customers don’t care. On a per transaction basis, that is zero difference to each of your customers, but delivers a major difference for our customers (you) and the product you get.
6. Highly discounted hardware with Lifetime Warranty. That guarantee costs us a lot of money every time we replace something for customers. It makes your life easier because you don’t have to think about hardware.
Again, anyone recommending you use Dual Pricing or a similar method under 3% is skimping somewhere. Your losing – for no reason. Is it talent? Is it Research and Development? Is it support? Is it quality hardware? Is it reliability? Is it speed of transactions? You don’t want to find out 60 days after you sign on the dotted line.
So when you ask us, “Why 3.5%?” the answer is, because we value you…. And that means we don’t skimp on the important stuff.
You’re running a million-dollar-plus operation; give it the technology and the team behind it you deserve.
