Sales analytics metrics are the pulse of your business. The right ones accurately measure the flow of revenue in and out of your store and provide vital insight into the health of your operation into the future.
Metrics aren’t goals themselves, however. A healthy pulse rate indicates a runner is in top condition, but the goal is to win the race. The same approach applies to sales analytics metrics.
The goal of your professional efforts is to achieve sustainable growth you can depend on into the future. Top metrics will reveal how each aspect of your business is currently performing so you can make decisions in pursuit of that growth— the best metrics lead to successful actions.
The most reliable indicators of current performance are:
- Customer retention
- Conversion rate
- Average transaction size
- Staff productivity
- Inventory turnover
- Month over month growth
- Return on investment capital
Measure your performance against these key sales analytics metrics and you’ll be in a position to create your best possible outcomes.
Accessing the Right Sales Analytics Metrics
Sales analytics were once the domain of high-end businesses that could afford dedicated internal auditing teams or flashy outside consultants.
Now, the tools to track sales, measure employee performance, trace the impact of marketing campaigns on revenue, and much more is built into the point of sales systems that already sit at the heart of most modern retailers.
The leading POS solutions include real-time reporting functionality to provide insight across even the smallest of businesses. These systems are all-in-one platforms that connect management tools with service operations so that everything from purchase orders to product returns can be counted and accounted for in the bottom line. Reports are generated at the tap of an iPad or smartphone screen and the sales analytics metrics that result can be acted on instantly.
The metrics listed below are among the best available to any small-to-medium business, but they are by no means an exhaustive group. With the right metrics, you can investigate every corner of your operations and find hidden value, remove unnecessary waste, and start growing your business.
1. Customer Retention
Here are two pieces of business research that reveal the importance of customer loyalty:
- 80% of future profits will come from 20% of existing customers
- A 5% increase in customer retention boosts profits by up to 95%
The bottom line is that reliable growth comes from returning customers. To find out what makes customers return to your business, you can access a range of direct metrics. These include capturing and assessing their buying patterns over time through your POS system to reveal their tastes and asking them about their experience through surveys and after-sales feedback.
2. Conversion Rate
Conversion rate is one of the simplest sales analytic metrics currently available, but its impact can be highly effective. It measures how often an opportunity for a sale results in a transaction. The key is to accurately define and count each opportunity, which can vary across businesses. You can consider every customer that enters your store as a potential sale, or you could expand to include every individual in outside foot traffic. Alternatively, you can use the metric for one-off assessments, such as the number of customers who act on promotional flyers or digital offers.
Following this metric over time reveals how effectively you are capitalizing on sales opportunities and whether you need to change your behaviors.
3. Average Transaction Size
This simple measurement of how much customers spend on average when they make a purchase is a prime example of how metrics lead to action. Every sale is an opportunity for an upsell, cross-sell, or to promote loyalty membership, and you should equip your staff with the training and tools to maximize these situations. Closely following average transaction size gives you instant feedback on the success of your efforts over time following these initiatives.
As with all the sales analytics metrics listed here, average transaction size quickly gives you accurate and actionable information you can act on to improve your revenue base.
4. Staff Productivity
Also known as operational productivity, staff performance metrics reveal how your team members impact sales. By assigning staff a digital identity they can use within your POS system, you can follow the raw data of their time on the floor. Metrics begin with a raw count of sale totals and tips balanced against hours worked, and can be increased in sophistication to include the types and size of transactions, loyalty program conversions, and even how often they use their own staff discount.
If you know your best performers, you can boost sales by having them smooth out times of peak demand, or boost sales during low turnover.
5. Inventory Turnover
Products move off your shelves at different speeds and profit margins. It’s important that you can understand the value each brings and the timeframe within which you need to move it to maximize benefit. Inventory turnover measures the cost of the inventory you’ve sold against the average cost of all the inventory you bought. It’s an evolution of the simple count of what you spend against what you sell, and it reveals much about your overall enterprise value.
Paired with the live inventory and stocktake functions available within the leading POS solutions, inventory turnover is a real-time assessment of your sales health.
6. Month over Month Growth
A digital POS system can give you instant feedback on every transaction that passes through your business. That level of detail means you don’t need to assess your business health against broad, long-range measures that limit the effectiveness of your actions. Instead, you can track sales against external events and internal initiatives as they occur.
By evolving from Year Over Year to Month Over Month or even shorter assessment timeframes, you can make timely decisions that keep your business nimble and flexible.
7. Return on Investment Capital
Investment capital in the 2020s is focused on the software and hardware tech you use to run your business. Since the arrival of the cloud—which shifts the cost and care burden of tech tools to third-party experts located online—these costs are efficiently spread out across opt-out subscription agreements. The return on investment capital metric measures how these payments stack up against the revenue they help create.
By closely monitoring this relationship you can effectively leverage the cost of technology against the advantages it produces. This is especially important as you scale your efforts in a growing business.
The POS solutions developed by talech can be customised to find the hidden value in your business. Using the latest sales metrics and data reports our tools can help you reduce waste, maximize potential, and get the most out of your team.
