Page 93 - Spring Into Markets 2021
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If you can, separately record the sales of your key products/product categories
as this will help you to plan layout changes, identify when products/product categories are at their peak (or waning), perhaps how a promotion or new product is doing. By recording your sales levels you will be able to identify daily/weekly/ monthly trends in your business and ensure that your stock levels are appropriate.
Also note down any events, festivals, dramatic changes in footfall — even the weather, as each one may have had an effect on the sale (or non­sale) of your products. This is important information in ensuring you have the correct stock levels in the future and have not over or under­estimated based on events that were outside of your control.
2: Number of purchasing customers (transactions)
The number of customers you serve is essentially the same as the number of transactions you make. Simple in itself, it is an important piece of information to know and record. If you use a till and it has an x or z read function this will often provide you with total sales and a list of transactions. Alternatively a simple tally chart on a notepad will do the same job.
All major retail businesses record this information as it is an important indicator of busiest days, which is not always apparent by just looking at total sales. For example sales could have been boosted by an unusually large sale, but customer numbers may in fact have been lower than usual.
Knowing your transaction numbers will enable you to see how well your stall is performing at peak periods or whether there is room for improvement. It allows you to assess whether you have sufficient staff to be able to sell to your current customer base — have people given up waiting to be served (i.e. a lost sale) or could your stall become more of a ‘self­serve’ operation, especially at peak times?
However the main reason for recording the number of transactions is that along with total sales it enables you to record a vital piece of performance monitoring information, your average transaction value.
  Guide 13 Monitoring Performance 93


























































































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