The 4 Big Keys of Analyzing Sales Data

Everybody wants to increase their revenue and profitability. And who doesn’t? If you increase your business’s revenue and profitability, that means everyone is taking home more money. With the 4 Big Keys of Analyzing Sales Data, you will be able to boost revenue and profitability and you will be able to identify what you already have and what you could be maximizing. 

Key #1: Affordability

How are people paying for your services? To answer this question, you’re going to want to look at the last month and the last quarter and you’re going to want to break down the ways in which people are paying when it comes to cash, credit card and financing. When you break these three elements dow, you want to identify which plans your clients are choosing, especially when it comes to financing. 

When you’re analyzing which plans people are selecting, it’s important that you are careful about human biases. Is there a financing plan that is getting advertised or marketed more than others? If the one being advertised is the clear winner, it’s likely because your clients were more aware of it. 

Key #2: Product Interest

Product interest refers to what exactly your clients are buying. For this key, you need to look at your company broken down by department. Ask yourself, what are your clients buying and why are they buying them? 

These are the questions you should be asking:

• Which products are selling?
• Which products are not selling?
• Which products are we promoting?
• Which products do we need to consider cutting?

Key #3: Profitability

Which products are making you money? This is where you will need to look in, do job-costing, and ask the question: is this product worth doing and can we do better at it? 

You also need to identify if it’s priced properly. Sometimes when we offer big jobs, we cut away the cost because it might scare away customers. However, if you keep cutting away the cost, you will find yourself doing big jobs that have a high overhead with little profitability. 

Key #4: Productivity

For this key, we’re referring to the productivity of people. You need to breakdown who on your team is driving the best results and producing the most revenue and profitability. It’s important that you look at profitability in addition to revenue because if you have a sales rep or technician who is bringing in a lot of revenue, they might be offering too many discounts or unauthorized sales that can hurt your profitability. Likewise, you might have a sales rep or technician that brings in less revenue, but they aren’t promoting sales as much, so they are bringing in higher profitability. 

Breaking it Down

When you break down all four keys, you will get a crystal clear image of who and what is producing cash flow for your company. Once you break it down, you’ll want to bring in your people so they can also dial in on profitability. 

For your third quarter this is what we recommend: 

• Look at your second-quarter data
• Break it all down by each key
• Look at your goals and make adjustment through training and KPIs

If you want help with this, you can set up a discovery call with Todd Liles or shoot us an email!