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Quick question: when sales dip or spike,
do you know why?

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Or do you just feel relieved when they're good
and stressed when they're not?

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Today I want to talk about why avoiding
your sales numbers keeps you stuck,

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and how looking at the right numbers
actually helps build your confidence, not pressure.

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Welcome to the Resilient Retail Game Plan!
I'm Catherine Erdly,

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and in the next few minutes you're about to get
powerful real-world retail strategies

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from insights shared both from my guests
and myself, backed up by my 25 years

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in the retail industry. Keep listening to learn
how to grow a thriving, profitable product business.

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Let's jump in with this latest episode.

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It's one of the biggest ironies of small business life
is that you actually have a huge amount

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of data available to you. Most providers,
most website providers, will give you

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a whole tonne of analytics. And you also have things
like a ping sound when you get a sale,

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which can make you feel like you're really on top
of all of your sales and you've really got
your finger on the pulse.

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But what I actually think happens
is something like a Magic Eye painting.

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You know, one of those pictures from the '80s
and '90s where when you look at it,

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first of all, you just see
a whole load of pixels.

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Stare deep into the pixels.

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And then you have to step back and let your
eyes adjust, and then you can see the picture

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that it's really trying to show you.
And your sales and your analytics are just like that.

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When you have this constant stream of information,
it can give you the impression that you are
totally on top of your sales.

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You know exactly what's going on, but really
all you are seeing is that pixelated nonsense.

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You are just seeing the money coming in,
the sales happening, but it's not showing you

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what is actually going on behind the scenes.

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So most business owners that I work with,
they don't get themselves into a really regular routine

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where they're reviewing their sales,
they're understanding what the numbers are telling them,

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and then they're taking action
based on that information.

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What's happening instead is that they know
how much they took that day,

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maybe what they took that week, but even sometimes
if I ask them how the month has been going,

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they might not know, because it's not something
that they're looking at.

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They feel like they've got this constant feedback loop,
but in reality, what they've got is a lot of noise.

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And also, numbers can feel emotional.
People feel like they might be disappointed

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if they look at their numbers, or they just don't
really know which numbers they're supposed to be

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looking at to make their decisions.
They're not really sure what it's telling them.

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And so they kind of keep an eye on it,
but that's about as far as it goes.

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And some people are completely in denial.
They don't even look at the numbers

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unless I specifically ask them to sit down
and pull their numbers for the month, for example.

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And we do that within Retail Sales Game Plan
as part of the monthly planning process.

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So people worry that if they look at their numbers,
it brings up all kinds of uncomfortable feelings.

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Some of us believe that we're not numbers people
because our Year 3 maths teacher told us

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that we weren't great at maths
or something like that.

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We worry that we are bad at business
if we don't understand these numbers,

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so we avoid them. People have this huge amount
of information at their fingertips,

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but as I said, they just don't really know
what to do with it.

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And my favourite phrase is
information for action.

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I don't think it's enough just to be able to pull
a report that tells you, you know,

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I sold 12 of this item.
Well, so what? What does that mean?

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If we don't look though — if we completely disengage
from the process of actually reviewing our numbers —

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we can end up guessing instead of deciding.
We can repeat mistakes

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and we find it harder to build momentum.

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So for example, one of the things that might happen
is that we assume something is a bestseller,

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but actually it's been tailing off and we've been
buying back into it, but actually we didn't really

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need to anymore. What we needed to do
was find something else instead.

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Or maybe we feel like actually things aren't going
that well, and yet when we pull the numbers together

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of the sales from across all of our different channels,
whatever it might be,

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we're actually doing better than we think.

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In fact, one of my favourite stories is inside
the Resilient Retail Club.

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We were talking about our monthly performance
and somebody said,

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"I always had it in my head that when I hit
this particular turnover number,

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I was going to feel like I'd made it.
And I've been feeling really rubbish

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about how the business has been going lately,
but I actually pulled together all my numbers

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and I looked at them and I saw that I had actually
hit that turnover number."

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If you don't ever look at your numbers,
you kind of lose touch with the business

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and how it's doing, and you can't
create those feedback loops.

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So tracking your numbers — it's not about perfection,
it's about getting feedback.

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It's not about judgment. It's about understanding
the stories in terms of what is happening

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in the business.

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In terms of what I would recommend that you do:
I think you need to have a weekly check-in.

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I would love for you to check your sales
once a week and keep it pretty simple.

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Just: how much did I take this week?
What was my sales figure?

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I think that's really useful to record it,
because when you are planning a future year,

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for example, it's really important to know
week by week how your sales went.

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So it's particularly important when you come to
the fourth quarter — yes, I'm already going to talk

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about the fourth quarter again, already this year.
It's really important to understand

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the week-by-week distinction. So writing down
the amount that you took each week

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is really important.

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Now, some people will say to me,
"Well, Catherine, I can get that information

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anytime I want from my system."
That's absolutely true. You can.

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But a lot of the time you'd have to put in
each different week, or you'd have to run

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a report by week. And most people
wouldn't do that.

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It's just another step. It's just another friction.
Whereas if you've got a spreadsheet

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where you're recording it each week,
then that's there for you.

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You can make notes about what you did,
what drove it, and then that becomes

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a really, really important record
that you can use going forward.

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So when it comes to looking at your numbers,
I think about the three Rs:

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record, review, refine.

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You record the numbers on a weekly basis.
On a monthly basis, you can do a bit more

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of an in-depth look at things like your sales
versus your plan versus the year.

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Looking at things like your conversion rate,
which is really important,

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your average order value, which is really important,
your returning customer rate,

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things like that.

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And then you review it. You look at those numbers,
you ask yourself: do you know why this has happened?

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What was it in the business that drove these results?
Making sure that you've got good detailed notes

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on that, because again, you might have some of that
information sort of spread around.

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You might be able to go into your Instagram
and look at what posts you put up,

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or go into your email marketing
and look at what emails you sent.

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But having it all together in one place
is much, much more powerful,

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because you can just look at the notes
that you made yourself that month.

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And then refine. So what action
are you taking from it?

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As I said, it's not enough just to record
the numbers. You actually want to understand

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what to do with it. What's it telling you if,
for example, your sales were really tough?

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What happened? What marketing activity
were you doing — or not doing?

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What was happening the previous year
that made the previous year much better?

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Understanding all of those dynamics will really
help you understand your business

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and will really help you clarify going forward
what action you want to take,

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and what to do with your business to make it better,
to make it stronger over time.

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So that high level — pulling back and looking
at the high-level patterns of your business —

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that is the equivalent of the Magic Eye picture
snapping into place

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and you seeing the true image
of what's going on.

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So daily sales — to be honest, unless you are
a multi-million pound retailer,

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and even then they fluctuate a lot —
for a small retailer, you may entirely have a day

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where you make no sales
but still have a successful month.

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Your daily pattern is much, much less important
than your week or your month.

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So don't worry yourself too much about day by day.
Look at your weekly patterns

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and your monthly patterns, and then also start
really asking yourself why —

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and that's why when it's good
and why when it's bad —

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so that you can start to put together theories,
things that you can test,

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and things that you can tweak and do differently,
which is ultimately the aim of the game.

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The whole of retail could be summed up by saying:
do more of what works well

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and less of what doesn't.

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And the only way to really understand
if what you're doing is working

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and if what you are doing is actually moving
in the right direction —

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the only way to do that is by recording things
on a weekly or monthly basis,

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so that you can see:
are you going in the right direction?

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And then also, as I said, we make mistakes.
We do things that don't work.

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We buy products that don't really sell.
We try marketing campaigns that fall a bit flat.

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But if we don't examine those, ask ourselves
why they worked or didn't work,

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and then think about what we do differently
next time, we will never get ourselves

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in a situation where we can move things forward.

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So you want to be in touch with your own business.
You want to be really focused

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on what those numbers are telling you.
You don't want to be drowning

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in big, long, complicated spreadsheets.
It can be very, very simple.

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We have a simple template within
the Retail Sales Game Plan

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that we go through as part of the course.
We go through a whole structure

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in terms of weekly reviews and monthly reviews,
and we talk in more depth

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about how to actually take that information
and take action from it.

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So it's not about spreadsheets
for the sake of spreadsheets.

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It's tracking how you turn
your effort into progress.

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So if you want your sales to feel more predictable,
then you need to have feedback.

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The Retail Sales Game Plan helps you
build that feedback loop

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so you can stop guessing
and start adjusting with confidence.

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So if these episodes have resonated with you,
keep an eye out for more details coming soon.

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You can also head over to
resilientretailclub.com/retailsales

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and join the waitlist so that when the doors open
for the Retail Sales Game Plan at the end of February,

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you can be first to know, and we would love to have you
and help you build more calm and consistent sales

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in your retail business.

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See you next week.