You’re ambitious and hardworking, your clothing is fresh and on-trend, and yet you can’t understand why your sales have plateaued.
Even the best of the best retailers find themselves in a post-holiday sales slump. No retailer is immune to it.
The good news is that there are some clear, actionable items to get yourself out of that hole. Let’s explore some ways to set realistic goals and achieve them.
Set Achievable Goals for 2024
The very first step to remedying your slump is to create goals. To efficiently progress towards any achievement, you need to have a clear idea of where you are right now, what you want to accomplish in the future, and how you want to get there. Goals are necessary to define that achievement and the means to get there.
When we think of goals, we think of setting our sights high. There is nothing wrong with having high ambition. However, we need to set realistic goals if we want to keep our motivation high. If your monthly sales are around $5k, it is not reasonable to set your goal at $100k per month.
CommentSold has seen many small boutiques eventually reach such a lofty goal, but it has never been overnight. It has always been incremental, with lots of planning, patience, and perseverance. Mainly, they got there by being deliberate with their sales goals each month, and you can too!
Take a look at Product Inventory and Scheduling
Once you’ve defined your goal, the next step will be setting a plan to achieve this goal.
When people ask, “Why can’t I ever sell more than this number?”, a lot of times the answer is as simple as, “You are not posting enough product to meet your sales goals.” It may sound super obvious, but if there isn’t clear inventory visibility and goals, it can quickly go right over our heads. Out of sight, out of mind!
Let’s assume that our sales goal is $16k for the month. If we assume a 2x markup on inventory, this means that for that month, you will have to have purchased and sold $8k of inventory.
Now, let’s think about how much inventory must be sold during the month and how that will be scheduled out. How much are we selling per month? What about a week? And a day? To achieve 16k a month, you’ll need to sell $4k per week, which equals $572 per day.
If you use CommentSold, you will be able to see the potential revenue for the items posted to social media. Likewise, you can see your potential revenue for all items you’ve included in a product selection for a live sale.
If you post to Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok without the help of CommentSold, you can use a spreadsheet or a plain old notebook if you want. You will simply need to make a note of the product you post, the price, and how many you have to sell to have an accurate number for total potential revenue.
Do an Inventory Evaluation
Do you know how much inventory you currently have on hand? After calculating scheduling and sales numbers, you might find that you do not even have enough inventory to meet your sales goal. There are two different ways you can order and manage inventory to increase your sales.
1) You can increase the number of packs of each product you order, which is known as purchasing deeper.
2) You can purchase more different kinds of products, which is known as purchasing wider.
Make a Purchasing Plan for New Inventory
How do you decide between purchasing deeper or wider? If you use waitlists, take a look at your added versus waitlist percentage!
The optimal percentage for Added vs. Waitlist is 70/30. Ideally, you would want your customers to get 70% of the items they claim. It is okay for them to get waitlisted sometimes. Waitlists create a sense of urgency to shop with you! Basically, they better hurry up and comment because the items are going quickly!
If your waitlist percentage is higher than 70%, you run the risk of discouraging your customers from trying to buy because they may get the impression that it isn’t worth trying to buy because everything is always sold out. That’s no fun!
If your waitlist percentage is higher than 70%, you will want to purchase a wider variety of products and make more posts per day to reach your goal.
If your added percentage is lower than 70%, you can order deeper by purchasing an additional pack or two to increase your sales.
The Takeaway
Benchmarking your current numbers, making attainable goals, and calculating for smarter inventory buying decisions that will increase your sales with each passing month in 2024. Use this plan to surpass the last big sales goal, and eventually, you will achieve numbers you have previously only dreamed of.
“Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe, and upon which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to success.” – Pablo Picasso
