7 Signs a Scary Sales Slump is Creeping In (this Holiday Season)

As a wholesale distributor in the holiday category, sales should be anything but scary right now—just days before Halloween. Business seems to be going well, but is it?

This is the perfect time of year to take stock of where you’re at to determine if you need to deploy a few marketing campaigns before year end to spook your customers into action.

Let’s review seven signs that indicate you may be headed for a sales slump instead of a reason to celebrate at the end of the year.

1. Compare sales for the current period to your prior year to determine how well you’re doing compared to last year. If sales are down more than 10% the same period the prior year, you may be in for a bumpy holiday ride. It’s a great practice to review these numbers on a month-to-month basis to always ensure you and your team know how you’re trending.
    
2. Your conversions are dropping like the living during a zombie apocalypse. Converting prospects into customers and the rate at which customers purchase versus abandon a shopping cart are great KPIs to review going into the holiday season and regularly.
    
3. Another important KPI to watch year round is your customer repurchase rate. If customers are purchasing from you once and not returning to your site to purchase again, there may be trouble with things that customers typically find frustrating: lack of order and shipment tracking or order processing errors.
    
4. If you are running any PPC campaigns, check on your CTR—if that is dropping, it may be time to revisit your approach to those ads whether you make keyword or copy adjustments.
    
5. Your field sales numbers are waning. If you’re sales reps that are out in the field aren’t bringing in as much as they used to on a monthly basis, are they really out in the field. It might be time to consider an incentive-based sales program to get your team fired up to hit the road.
    
6. Your customer service satisfaction ratings have dropped. This may also indicate a problem with order management and your back-of-the-office teams.  It’s always a good idea to survey former and current customers to see if there’s any areas in need of improvement. If there is room for improvement, implement a ticketing system for your customer facing teams.
    
7. Employee morale is low. It’s also a great idea to survey your employees to see how they feel about their jobs, colleagues and the company. If your employees aren’t happy, it’s likely your customers perceive that in their interactions with them. This will certainly bleed into how employees treat your customers, so be sure to get a feel for how happy your employees are.

If you’d like to hear how we monitor the aforementioned KPIs and statistics using the Systum platform, fill out the form below. We’ll he happy to share how we take stock of sales, customer and employee satisfaction and the business in general.