Rate Of Sale Is The New Little Black Dress

If I had a dollar for every time someone asked me what KPIs they should be tracking, I wouldn't be writing you this blog post today.

But I would also like to have chocolate cake for breakfast every morning without consequences, so you know, there's that...probably not going to happen any time soon.

I have a pretty standard set of KPIs that I recommend to any beverage business that wants to approach things strategically: sales volume, points of distribution, # of buying accounts, etc.

But there's one KPI that is super important for your to monitor in our current market conditions - Rate of Sale.

Velocity, churn rate, item turnover, repeat orders...whatever you want to call it, it's all the same thing.

The rate at which your product is being purchased in retail outlets.

Rate of Sale is the new "little black dress" of your strategic business plan - it's a staple and should always be present.

Tracking the rate of sale of your SKUs allows you to see how well that placement is actually doing in your accounts.

The retailer has given you what you need - the placement of your brand(s).

Now you need to reciprocate by giving them what they need - quick sell-through and more revenue.

This helps reinforce your relationship with that retailer and is a vital part of creating long-term, profitable relationships with your accounts.

So why is ROS so important right now?

Because the total number of retail accounts in the US has dropped to a level that we haven't seen in our industry since 2010.

Case in point - the state of the On-Premise market segment as reported by Lester Jones of the NBWA in December 2021.

There are fewer opportunities for you to add new accounts to your buying set.

And your existing accounts are not open as often due to staff shortages.

So if you don't attack our market strategically with KPI tracking that caters to our current CPG environment, you're going to have a lot of trouble increasing sales in 2022.

How do you increase your Rate of Sales?

Depends on your brand. You need to know what works for your unique products.

Make sure you're keeping track of success stories, as well as dumpster fires from the field, so you know what works and what doesn't.

Take photos of displays, track the ROI of your promotions, and think outside of the box to move the sales volume needle!

Tap takeovers and pint nights are just not going to cut it these days.

But coming up with creative promotions that embrace the unique needs of your retailer, combined with your brand value propositions and marketing capabilities, is a winning combination to increase your rate of sales.

Time to build a new box!