Sales Mix Shift

Six routines to put into practice

1. The monthly account review

Who: sales manager. Compare: Last 3 months vs the same 3 last year.

1. Read the Revenue sentence. It says whether the month's story is lost customers, price or volume, and which band led it.

2. In the Slipped list under the grid, click the top line, then Export this cell.

3. Give each rep their accounts from it, with the question from the matrix for the band they left.

4. Next month, run it again and check that the same names have stopped slipping.

2. Margin early warning

Who: owner or finance. Compare: Last 6 months vs the previous 6.

1. Switch the bridge to Margin %. If the Price & cost bar for Top Revenue is red, margin is slipping on your biggest accounts.

2. The sentence says why: costs not passed on, costs rising faster than prices, or customers buying lower-margin products.

3. Click Top Revenue · Avg Margin and Top Revenue · Low Margin and look for −1 Margin in the Move column: same volume, lower margin.

4. For each, compare Margin % base and current. A drop of a few points on a top account is worth more than any new customer this quarter.

3. Win-back

Who: sales team. Compare: Last 12 months vs the 12 before.

1. In the Revenue view, the Lost bar says what the lost customers were worth. That is the size of the prize.

2. Click Lost below the grid and Export this cell. Sort the spreadsheet by base revenue: the top twenty are your win-back list.

3. Add the Top Revenue records whose Move reads −3 Revenue (now Low Activity). They have nearly gone.

4. Growth targets by rep

Who: sales manager, once a quarter.

1. Run Customers, then Apply to categories, with Keep after the next import ticked.

2. In Dynamic Reports, choose Customer - GROWTH X by Salesman. Each rep's portfolio is now split by band.

3. Set each rep a target to move named accounts from Mid · High Margin and Low · High Margin up one revenue band.

5. Range review

Who: purchasing or product manager. Analyse: Products, Last 12 months vs the 12 before.

1. In the Margin view, the table splits Price & cost into unit prices, unit costs, and the customers who bought. Rising unit costs are the supplier conversation.

2. Low Revenue · Low Margin and Low Revenue · Nil Margin are the candidates to drop or reprice.

3. Top Revenue · Low Margin are the lines to renegotiate with suppliers.

4. Lost products: check each was meant to stop. Some will be stock-outs nobody noticed.

6. The quarterly report

Who: owner or finance, for the board or the bank. Compare: Last 12 months vs the 12 before, or Last 3 months vs the same 3 last year for the quarter alone.

1. Run Customers, choose Export, then Word (RTF) with all three views ticked.

2. Run Products and export again. The two reports tell the same story from both sides: who bought less, and what sold less.

3. Open them in Word and add a line under each sentence: what you will do about it, and who owns it.

4. Next quarter, run the same Compare and set the new report beside the old one. The question is whether last quarter's actions changed the sentence.