{"id":37449,"date":"2015-08-21T12:34:29","date_gmt":"2015-08-21T16:34:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mytotalretail.com\/post\/?p=37449"},"modified":"2017-02-16T09:36:56","modified_gmt":"2017-02-16T14:36:56","slug":"sales-looking-causes-heres-checklist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mytotalretail.com\/sales-looking-causes-heres-checklist\/","title":{"rendered":"Sales Down? Looking for Causes? Here&#8217;s a Checklist"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>PATIENT:<\/strong> &#8220;Doc, we&#8217;ve recently experienced a sales drop and I don&#8217;t understand why. What&#8217;s the best way to track down why it happened and how to fix it?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>CATALOG DOCTOR:<\/strong> &#8220;You&#8217;re doing right to quickly dig into causes behind the sales drop. The quicker you know why, the faster you can fix things. Here&#8217;s a checklist of the top reasons I&#8217;ve seen over the years for surprise sales declines. Check if your catalog has recently experienced any of these changes.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Offer Changes<\/strong><br \/>\nDid you recently:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u00a0Make big changes to your offers without testing first?<\/li>\n<li>Stop making special offers at all?<\/li>\n<li>Increase or decrease your offer hurdles a lot (e.g., &#8220;Free shipping for orders over $100&#8221; vs. &#8220;Free shipping for orders over $50&#8221;)?<\/li>\n<li>Did competitors recently start offering much better deals than you?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Creative Changes<\/strong><br \/>\nDid you recently:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u00a0Rebrand or do a major redesign without testing first? (I&#8217;ve seen more than one cataloger make creative changes that turned away their core audience.)<\/li>\n<li>Change all catalog fonts to something hard to read for your audience (e.g., too small of point size; reverse type over textured backgrounds; etc)?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Pricing Issues<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Did you recently raise prices more than just a little? Core customers will usually keep buying, but many fringe customers and prospects may just skip buying from your catalog altogether.<\/li>\n<li>Did any competitor recently drop their prices on the same or similar products? You may need to focus on reducing operational inefficiencies in order to gain enough margin to meet competitive pricing.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Equipment or Software Failures<\/strong><br \/>\nCheck if:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Phone lines aren&#8217;t working or are working sporadically (one cataloger had eight lines installed but only four got switched on, so calls got through fine during light call periods, but had failures when call volume was heavy).<\/li>\n<li>Your web orders aren&#8217;t flowing through to your internal order management system.<\/li>\n<li>Email links aren&#8217;t linking properly (I&#8217;ve seen a surprising number of wrong links, including a multibrand cataloger with links going to the wrong brand&#8217;s website).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Product Issues<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Did previously popular products recently have a big drop in quality? You&#8217;ll see it in increased product returns and complaints.<\/li>\n<li>Are vendor or shipping issues causing big back-order problems? You&#8217;ll see it in increased cancellations.<\/li>\n<li>Did you keep offering many poor sellers rather than discontinuing them and replacing them with new products?<\/li>\n<li>Have competitors recently knocked off your top sellers? And maybe at lower prices?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Undelivered or Late Mail<\/strong><br \/>\nDid some of your mail not get delivered or get delivered too late? I&#8217;ve seen several catalogers over the years have pallets of catalogs &#8220;go missing&#8221; in a printer&#8217;s warehouse. Always use a mail-tracking service like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hausernet.com\/mail_delivery.html\">Hauser<\/a> or <a href=\"http:\/\/www.usmonitor.com\/html\/index.aspx\">U.S. Monitor<\/a> so you can get quick reads on delivery across the country.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Circulation Changes<\/strong><br \/>\nDid you recently:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Stop prospecting or reduce prospecting significantly?<\/li>\n<li>Change the timing or frequency of your mailings dramatically, without testing first?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Customer Service Issues<\/strong><br \/>\nAny recent changes in:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Staffing that&#8217;s resulted in long call wait times, reduced customer service representative product knowledge, unpleasant customer interactions?<\/li>\n<li>Customer service standards (e.g., customers aren&#8217;t getting their problems resolved, or aren&#8217;t getting refunds and reshipments)?<\/li>\n<li>The fulfillment center, such that some shipments are taking a lot longer to go out? Or too many shipments going to wrong addresses?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If the above checklist uncovers a problem, move immediately to fix it. And be sure to check everything on the list &#8212; don&#8217;t stop checking when you find one thing wrong. Often a big sales drop is due to several factors, not just one.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, a big weather event, natural disaster, contentious national election or down economy may be the culprit. Fix what you can control, then read Greek philosopher Epictetus to help you cope with the rest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>PATIENT: &#8220;Doc, we&#8217;ve recently experienced a sales drop and I don&#8217;t understand why. What&#8217;s the best way to track down why it happened and how to fix it?&#8221; CATALOG DOCTOR: &#8220;You&#8217;re doing right to quickly dig into causes behind the sales drop. The quicker you know why, the faster you can fix things. Here&#8217;s a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"coauthors":[103243],"class_list":["post-37449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-branding","category-catalog-circulation","category-catalog-design","category-copywriting","category-creative","tag-catalog","tag-catalog-marketing","tag-rebrand","tag-susan-mcintyre","editorial_type-columnsopinions","blog_channel-catalog-doctor"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Sales Down? Looking for Causes? Here&#039;s a Checklist - Total Retail<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Here&#039;s a checklist of the top reasons I&#039;ve seen over the years for surprise sales declines. 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