A merchant's guide to asking questions to diagnose a sales decline from Daily Sales Report. Who to ask? Ask your Suppliers. Ask your Cross Functional Partners. Ask your Store Operations Team. Ask your E-commerce Team. Mech/ Merchandise /Revenue/Gross Profit/Margin/Dollars/Data/Ecommerce/Omnichannel/Retail

1. Daily Sales Report
Questions to Ask to Diagnose Sales
Decline
Joan Braatz
Vice President Sales

2. What is Daily Sales Report?
 Net Sales Report by Channel (store, ecommerce)
 Gross Profit Report by Channel (store, ecommerce)
 Tracks TY vs. PY Performance
 Reports TY vs. Plan Performance
 Reveals Consumer Behavior
 Provides predictable Conclusion to Close of Period

3. What if
Performance is Off
Track?

4. Ask These Questions to Formulate Action

5. What Category is Contributing to
Negative Trend? What Brand? What
sku?
Questions to Ask

6. Is There Adequate Stock to support
Sales? Did the Order Ship Late?
Were we Short shipped?
Questions to Ask

7. Is There Was Adequate Stock,
Should Future On Order be
Cancelled?
Questions to Ask

8. Is There an Upcoming Event that
Represents a High Percentage of
Plan for Month? Is Customer
Waiting?
Questions to Ask

9. Can an Upcoming Promo be
Leveraged to Drive Incremental
Traffic and Bridge the Gap in Sales?
Questions to Ask

10. Is Inventory Allocated
Appropriately? Should More
Inventory be Pushed to Store? Top
Doors?
Questions to Ask

11. What Action Can Mitigate Risk? Stop
Promotion & Raise Ticket? Shift
Merchandising to Aisle? Boost on-
line?
Questions to Ask

12. Is This a Shift in Consumer Behavior?
Is this Trend Driven by Outside
Factors (weather, competition,
pandemic)?
Questions to Ask

13. What is Happening at Competition?
What Can be Learned from Market
Intelligence?
Questions to Ask

14. Is it Time to Action Contingency
Plan?
Questions to Ask

15. Seek Answers to Formulate Action Plan

16. Thank You
braatzjoan@gmail.com
214-733-9677
https://www.linkedin.com/in/joanbraatz/
https://joanbraatz.com/
Reach Me
Joan Braatz
Vice President Merchandising
Retail | B2C | B2B