If you are serious about marketing and growing your business, then conducting a sales analysis on a regular basis is essential. An analysis of your brand’s or business’s sales enables you to establish growth trends and how your results compare with the market in which you compete. If you have more than one product or service it is also important to compare their sales. Product or service sales comparisons will enable you to determine which of your products or services make the greatest contribution to your business and which are growing or declining.
Why Is It Important?
Analysing your sales over several years enables you to establish sales patterns which will assist you in setting your sales budgets in the future. It is especially important to include the analysis when you are developing your marketing plan each year.
Your sales analysis will also help you identify where your strengths lie within your product or service range. Your sales and marketing activities can then be allocated accordingly to support the products or services that represent the greatest opportunity for future profitable growth. For example, if one product or service represents the majority of your sales you may need to allocate enough marketing and sales support to continually protect it from your competition.
You will also be able to compare your sales performance with your market. Whilst your business may be increasing in sales each year the market may be increasing at a greater rate. This may mean that one or more of your competitors are gaining share capturing more of your potential customers.
Tips
When analysing your sales performance consider the following:
- Pricing changes eg. price increases or discounting
- Competitors – competitors entering or exiting the market
- New product or service launch growing sales
- New product or service cannibalising existing product or service sales
- Customers moving between products or services
- Changes in customer demand eg. increasing or decreasing
- The segments and distribution channels you operate in
Do you conduct a sales analysis for your business?
Sorry, comments are closed for this post.