Read the key insights from this week's Breakfast Club. It's easier to plan for growth when you set Goals
- Oliver is discussing the importance of setting goals and KPIs for sales and customers, with a focus on using customer metrics to support revenue forecasts. This was foundational to being able to work out what numbers he needed to move to deliver The White Company Goals.
- He emphasizes the need to understand growth models and customer retention rates in order to set realistic goals. There are not that many metrics you need to know to be able to move them.
- Whilst forecasting is just that ‘a prediction’ which you can get right or wrong, using last year’s numbers as base for your assumptions is a good starting point from which to make your new financial year adjustments. There’s a good spectrum of client growth model data for different business sectors if you need some context.
- It is noted that regardless of a business's size or stage, these principles still apply. Sweet recommends creating a growth model as a tool for goal-setting. However, Oliver states that you can be optimistic when setting targets based on all retention metrics, you just need to understand what you are going to do to deliver those results
- The discussion moved on to the key metrics for growing a business quickly and the importance of understanding retention rates and acquisition metrics. It is rare to achieve the desired growth solely through retention, so recruitment becomes crucial as it generally has the biggest impact on growth.
- The group discusses different businesses' challenges with stock supply, especially in fashion where newness is important. Oliver also highlighted the importance of having flexibility in your business model to respond to changes in sales forecasts or other unexpected events. The risk associated with committing to stock orders several months out is significant and requires careful planning and management. Other risk areas could be running out of warehouse space or more commonly not having marketing budget to deliver your plans.
- The group discusses the challenges of forecasting and setting growth goals for a business. Oliver and Katy emphasize the importance of understanding customer behavior and having a solid marketing plan to support growth.
- Oliver suggested using data analysis tools like sales graphs at the top of the Sales Insights dashboards where you review and compare your new and existing customer metrics over any time period. Overall, he stresses the need for flexibility and adaptability in response to changing market conditions.
- Oliver suggests that people should look at their goals dashboard once a week to see if they are on track. The blue bars on the dashboard represent twelve months of sales and take out the seasonality of a business. A straight line forecast between where you are and where you want to go is as good as any way for knowing whether you're on track or not. If you're not on track, go to your growth model to understand what is it that's not happening that you would expect it to.
- It’s good to look at your drop by drop dashboard report every day, your goals dashboard every week and your growth model dashboard is fine to review either monthly or even quarterly. See links below
- The weekly performance email has just launched so that clients are prompted to review the key numbers that matter more regularly (and just the key numbers that matter).
- Next week's session will focus on costs when planning for growth with questions such as how much marketing budget do you need to hit your goals number and what is your allowable cost per customer?
Dashboard links:
https://app.sweetanalytics.com/sales/goals
https://app.sweetanalytics.com/sales/sales-insights
https://app.sweetanalytics.com/roi/drop-by-drop
https://app.sweetanalytics.com/sales/growth-model