The importance of the Daily Sales Report – part 1
The daily sales report (DSR) is such an important part of running an online business that I am going to dedicate a few posts this subject (3 in fact). I hope that you are already dying to know not just what a daily sales report is, but what it should contain, why it`s important, and how to apply it to your online business. Plus, as a bonus for visiting our humble blog, I will provide a link to download a workable example of a DSR in the final post. All your Christmases at once!
So, what is a daily sales report?
Actually the daily sales report, in various guises, has been around for ever in retail organisations. For the online business manager though, I would define the DSR as:
A way of pushing your most important key performance indicators ( KPI’s), in an understandable way, at every manager, team member and stakeholder in your online business.
The DSR should contain elements of sales data, web usage data, and analysis. In its final form it is most likely to be an email contain a simple summary of a KPI spreadsheet, sent to anybody that you think should have an interest, including the boss and the boss`s boss. (No-one ever got fired for sending out well organised and interesting information after all). It should contain the benchmarks for the business, the numbers that operate as the final check on success or failure. And if done properly it should provide a focus, a challenge, an incentive and a way to motivate.
Why is it important?
Perhaps this is a basic for doing business, but I have been involved with plenty of businesses that don’t do this. It is my clear experience that companies that do not partake in this basic are also the ones where the management can’t answer simple questions about the performance of their business. This leads to a complete lack of appreciation of analytics generally, followed by a lack of appreciation in marketing optimisation and development ROI, followed by a………You get the point, its not good!
So the daily sales report is important because:
- It gives you complete understanding of whether a day has been good, bad or indifferent, because you see the data EVERYDAY and can follow the trends
- It PUSHES web analytics data in the faces of management and business teams; it makes EVERYONE better understand the critical metrics and have a better appreciation of web analytics generally
- When people receive this data, they talk about it. This means that they understand better their place in affecting results – and consequently makes them responsible for driving KPI’s in the right direction
- It allows you to report the metrics that are important to you, not only the metrics that the management believes are important. This means that perhaps you’ll be able to ask for a bigger investment come budget time
Starting something basic like the DSR means that the next stage is always more comprehensive. For anybody struggling to gain traction with their web analytics programme, this is an essential, and might just give you the promotion you need to start expanding your capabilities.
The power of motivation
One of the great things that I experienced when working at Expedia was that nothing was ever done without a deep understanding of the metrics. This culture existed all the way through the business, but was manifested most clearly in the “flagging” of records. Each and every day where a sales record (number of sales or revenue) was recorded for any part of the business a red flag would appear on the daily report. This was as true for the small business units as it was for Expedia.com.
It becomes addictive to try and achieve a record, and this is tremendously motivational. In this way web analytics, through the daily sales report, can directly influence the way that people feel about their jobs. This is the best part of the daily sales report in my opinion.
Next week, part 2, what are the KPI’s and presentation elements that should be included in the DSR.
