The time we found 200,000$ in lost sales…

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After a 2 days’ work to find distribution anomalies in POS sales (sales made in stores) for our client, my colleague Jonathan shows up at my office to give me the news:

“I found it. Our client lost more than 200,000$ in sales over the last 12 months”.

 

Even worse: the 200K worth of lost opportunities was just for one of the retailers he distributes his products to at the national level. We would later find out the problem is also present throughout

all of the retailers. We show the observation (diagnostic) to the client a few days later.

 

These lost opportunities represent about 6% of the total sales our client makes in the retail industry.

 

We also suggest a solution to the client to make sure this situation don’t happen again in the future.

 

The solution: Find the anomalies and avoid them at all cost

  1. A new report can quickly show you distribution anomalies for selected products in stores.
  1. New sections are added to the stores review report used by the representatives so they can pay closer attention to problematic items.

 

The result: Improve your credibility and help your clients make more sales

All the representatives are pleased. They have new advice to give the managers during their visits to increase sales. With supporting evidence, their recommendations are:

 

“You should order more ABC products. They often run out and represent a 1,500$ loss each month in your store.”

“You really need to add this product to your selection. Did you know that in stores similar to yours it generates 200$ revenue per week?”

In front of undeniable facts, managers follow the representative’s recommendations and place orders.

 

The return on investment: awfully good!

It is never easy to evaluate the exact effect of our interventions on our clients’ sales.

In this case, we will estimate that on the 6% of identified opportunities, 3% were recovered the first year.

We will remain conservative to calculate the ROI and consider that the conversion of the opportunities is more around 1%.

 

Based on that number, our client got a 3000% return on investment the first year.

 

The solution is repaid in less than 4 weeks.

 

This is not an anecdote! There are lost opportunities everywhere… You probably have some too!

You think that story seems simplistic and anecdotal? You don’t think it applies to your reality? Well, think again!

 

During a sales analysis we should never assume that the results are false because it seems too simple to be true.

 

We have witnessed different manifestations of this issue many times in almost all the enterprises we met.

A better data analysis strategy and a more organized information deployment to the sales/marketing team significantly and rapidly improve the situation every time.

 

Data… opportunities

Warning: the following is meant to convince you that our PAWA solution will allow you to transform data into opportunities. We are professionals and we do not recommend trying this at home without our support and solution. J

We have carried out many projects with sales/marketing managers that had a lot of data to process.

We created our PAWA platform to help the team’s managers working for manufacturers/distributors/agents selling products in the retail, commercial and industrial sectors.

Basically, we injected key ingredients into our solution to:

  • Easily integrate data from different sources (sales, inventory, POS/Sell-out, shipment to customers/Sell-in, sales targets, territories, stores, products, etc.)
  • Combine all the data and present it in the supplier’s perspective (multi-retailers report, sales analysis by SKUs for all locations, etc.)
  • oards available, analyse opportunities and help the sales/marketing team to turn those opportunities in sales.

 

“Master” your data and improve your sales

The world we live in has increasingly more data.

By using it properly you can find hidden opportunities today.

To maximize the value of your data:

  1. Accept the fact that opportunities are hidden in your data today.
  1. Accept the idea that you should use different approaches to find opportunities.
  1. Implement the proper tools to identify opportunities and make them available to your team so they can help improve your sales.

 

Start a conversation to seize new opportunities

Have you implemented practices and tools to identify opportunities recently?

Do you believe opportunities are hidden in your data?

I understand that few managers will openly admit it so…

If you want to discuss this further and seize new opportunities, contact me.

 

See also:

 

Anecdote: A short story about an interesting or funny event or occurrence.
Find out more at Merriam-Webster dictionary

 

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