CHRISTMAS…not so important?

Christmas gets lots of attention. There’s no denying that it’s an important sales season. But how important is it really?   

Many say that retailers lose money all year and need Christmas to turn a profit. Have a bad Christmas season and you have a losing year…but is that really true?

We’ll take a look at retail sales…and maybe we’ll discover that our focus on Christmas overlooks the most important selling opportunities we really do have.

 Click to read on...

WHY SALES REPS DON'T WRITE MANY ORDERS

As a sales manger, one of the most common complaints I hear from business owners is that their sales reps aren’t out writing enough orders.

On the other hand, the sales people often say the economy is bad and stores just aren’t buying (that’s not really the case as we discussed here ).

Both viewpoints  are really missing the big picture.  The reality is that after the trade show there are simply too many reps, vendors and product chasing too little opportunity.

Another way to put it is that supply exceeds demand.

Click to read why…

Sales reps: More skills or more effort – how to test

Sales teams are our most important asset.    And like any job, selling takes a combination of skill and effort.

So should you invest in skill development or should you focus on increasing their effort?

It’s an important question, because which ever path you take, either training to improve skills or incentives to increase effort, you will be spending money.  And you don’t want to waste it; you want a real return on your investment.

Incentive programs will be a failure if your sales team doesn’t have the right skills.  The opportunity to earn more money doesn’t magically make you more skilful. 

And spending on skill development will be completely wasted if the real problem is that sales people are simply not putting in the right effort.    

It’s actually very simple to determine if you have a skill problem or an effort problem.   Read on and learn how to do a simple test for skills vs effort.

MOTIVATION: WINNING BONUS PLANS…and why some waste your money

0ver 450 orders by 10 sales agents in 10 weeks.  Results like this require a skillful sales team...and the right incentive program.

The chart on the right shows how one sales team responded very differently depending on the incentive program.

One incentive program produced 60% better results...that's sales to 200 more stores...compared to the weaker incentive program.

Read on...to learn why one bonus program was wildly successful and one simply wasted money.

TRENDS: CAN YOU SPOT THEM?

Trends are an important part of our industry.  And "Market Pulse" published by the CGTA is a great source to understand sales trends.  But you need to know how to interpret it.  We’ll show you how in this blog.  

All vendors face long production lead times (4 to 6 months), so they simply can’t spot a
trend today and then have it ready for delivery tomorrow.   They need to anticipate trends.   

Consequently wholesalers have no choice but to take a guess about the future.  And basically what they need to do is determine whether a category is growing or declining.

 

If a wholesaler anticipates that fewer retailers are purchasing a product category, they will produce fewer products.  No one wants to be stuck with inventory and few potential customers.

On the other hand, if a wholesaler senses the number of retailers interested in a category is growing it may produce more merchandise in anticipation of higher demand. You don’t want to miss out on sales.

The ability to identify trends is important...lots of money is at stake.  How do you predict growing or declining categories? 

CGTA RETAILERS’ SATISFACTION WITH NEW PRODUCTS PLUMMET…vendors offering new collections rewarded.

The recent CGTA annual report ominously warned, “Buyers who were very satisfied with new product introductions fell … to 26 per cent.”

Basically 75% of retailers are unhappy with the main reason you are a wholesaler..to bring them new products they can sell.   

And as we noted here, retailers rank wholesalers as a bigger problem than big-box retailers.    

The report sadly added,  “Research conducted with attendees… demonstrated that the number one reason retailers attend gift shows is to find new products.  However, this is the one area buyers continue to find disappointing.    Approximately 85 per cent of buyers that attend the gift shows agree they want to see more new product introductions.

In this post we’ll show you how one wholesaler,  after several years of flat sales, re-vitalized their business by focusing on new product development.  And as an added bonus they were also able to reduce their overall inventory levels as well.

More products and lower inventories…now that’s how you compete!

SALES STRATEGY: LEAVE THE CROWD BEHIND

What is your sales strategy? 

Does your sales strategy start with:

• a product launch at a trade show?
• followed by a motivational speech to your reps to get on the road to sell that great new collection you have?
• and finally some discount-promotions to boost your flat sales?

You probably answered yes to each of these.  That’s almost every CGTA vendor’s sales strategy.  

In this post we'll show you how some vendors are taking a new approach...and tripling their same-store sales.  Read on...

HOW CGTA WHOLESALERS ARE LIKE WINE EXPERTS

 Wine experts make predictions about vintages in much the same way CGTA wholesalers judge a product collection.  

Wine buyers will purchase a wine today even though the wine itself will take several years to mature.  Consequently, wine tasters are employed to taste the wine today and then assess how well it will mature.  The buyers will then rely on this assessment of the future to price the wine.

CGTA wholesalers ship the bulk of their collection immediately following a trade show.  Because they are importers they need to place their production runs 4 to 6 months in advance of the trade show.

So much like the wine industry, CGTA employs product developers, think of them as wine-tasters of the industry, to select products they believe will sell based on their experience.

Now predicting the future is always a difficult task.  But those who can do it well are rewarded handsomely.  So let’s take a look at how some in the wine industry and in the CGTA have made prediction easier.

CGTA RETAILERS RANK WHOLESALERS AS A BIGGER THREAT THAN BIG BOX STORES!

CLICK TO ENLARGE

A recent survey by the CGTA identified increased costs from wholesalers as one of the top problems faced by CGTA retailers.  

How big a concern is this?  Retailers ranked it as a bigger threat than competition from big box stores!

Now if you are a supplier think about this:  Your own customers view you as a bigger menace than their actual competitors!

CGTA RETAILERS VS THE MAJORS

We love CGTA retailers. They're an amazing group of independent small-business people.  

In our opinion they are a misunderstood group.  We also sense they greatly under-estimate themselves!

Coming off the trade shows, many of the retailers we spoke with complained about the big-box stores like HOMESENSE… despite the fact they actually perform as well as HOMESENSE.

 

In this post we’ll look at how effectively CGTA retailers are competing against the majors. 

CGTA TRADE SHOWS: SALES GRIDLOCK

The CGTA trade show will, in 4 short days, generate more sales than in the following 5 months for most wholesalers!

Many wholesalers and sales representatives will generate 60% to 70% of their sales at this event. Now think about that.  If 4 days generates 70% of this business, it begs the question, what is going on the rest of the year?

Some find it difficult to believe the trade shows represent such a wildly disproportionate source of revenues. But if you don’t understand this huge bottleneck, you can’t get out of the traffic jam and on the road to bigger sales.

In this post we’ll look at data provided by retailers with corroborating results from wholesalers. 

CGTA RETAILERS: AMAZING STABILITY

The Spring CGTA trade show is upon us.

And the most common greeting, at least among sales people, will be “How’s the show for you?”

This of course, will spark replies in the narrow range from, “it seems flat”, to “not as good as previous years” and similar lackluster comments.

The reality is that sales in the CGTA are remarkably stable.  

WHY YOUR BESTSELLERS AREN’T REALLY THAT POPULAR

In this post we’ll see why focusing on best sellers is a poor sales strategy.  In fact it’s no strategy at all because bestsellers are unpredictable.  The majority of sales come from those products we barely notice.

In our last blog we identified that the 80-20 rule simply doesn’t exist for CGTA wholesalers.  It’s an important factor to understand so we’ll elaborate more deeply here.  

BESTSELLERS GET THE BUZZ…but it’s the boring products that drive your sales.

“What are your best-sellers?”  Almost everybody in the CGTA wants to know the “top 10”.  The fact is, the relative importance of best-sellers is greatly exaggerated.

We’ve all heard the mantra, 80% of sales originate from 20% of products.  The rule of the bestsellers.  It's widely quoted...yet it simply does not exist in practical terms…and it is so easy to identify that it’s a little disconcerting many CGTA players often quote this false statistic.