Historical data on sales behavior is, when it exists, a good way to move forward looking back, however that does not resolve the uncertainty of the area's true field of action: truly working with the future.
It's good to look back from time to time
For many decades projecting the future of sales only in the historical trend, it has been a powerful tool that alone has remained until these times. However, with the dizzying dynamics of today's markets, driving sales by looking in the rearview mirror can be a good way to miss opportunities, and at times even dangerous.
Based on trends, there are disadvantages that should be taken into account when deciding to only stick to this practice, for example:
1. Using the sales trend as a valid parameter also implies accepting the management errors that caused these figures and that are mixed with the successes. This is very common to find among retail buyers who usually make decisions about effective rotations at the point of sale that do not include the shortage times generated by the internal merchandising management process or failures in the purchase rhythm: these data are not considered since they are speculative. However, many times a product that has little exhibition space, is very damaged since its rotation is dramatically linked to the purchasing rhythm. This can happen in any business order, for example, the fact that an import delay is delayed can distort sales results.And so there are plenty of examples.
2. The halo effect generated by the graph of a trend, can make management validate this as true for the future, consciously or unconsciously deciding its future growth based on that factor, which is highly debatable regarding certainties.
3. The changes of products, technologies, aggressiveness of the competition can totally ignore in some cases the validity of this trend for the future, which can become inconvenient for the company.
It is good to look back, but given this brief example of its disadvantages, it is necessary to combine it with an instrument for future vision that will improve opportunities and, incidentally, results.
Why we must look forward with greater attention.
The first reason has a physical hold: No one can fast forward if they are permanently looking back. Secondly, because the potential opportunities do not have certain statistics or solid trends that can be consulted in the same way that historical data is consulted.
Finally, the opportunities cannot be taken with clear success if certain planning and control instruments are not applied, complemented by a good management model that stabilizes the way the project is carried out.
We realize that when the business scenario is increasingly dynamic, and market share is increasing, maintaining business is no longer just based on instinct and personal effort, but requires both hard and soft people and technologies, that generate more stable and projective scenarios.
On the contrary, it is common that the founders of the company, once young and enthusiastic about their company, find themselves tired and lacking in ideas to guide them just when they have more experience and when they could make more contribution to it. Some step aside, others reinvent themselves, others take their company through an organizational development process that allows them to professionalize management and improve human capital. With any of the solutions they adopt, there is a single tool that must always be present if you want to grow: develop a sales management model that allows you to develop and apply adequate, assertive and timely planning and control tools.
The entrapment of retail:
The activity of retail purchases, usually goes against all accepted sales concepts, since they do not care much about the success but the error; in this way they charge the supplier for “non-supplies”, for shortages and for arrears. In this way, retail activity has become a predatory activity that ends up lowering quality along with prices.
Even when retail buyers believe otherwise, the truth is that the quality of products and services in general have fallen significantly, which is forcing two major trends: a grouping of suppliers and a tightening of certifications in order to protect the consumer.
In another respect, serious consideration is being given to decentralizing intermediate demand since it is preventing healthy competition and concentrating all capital in a few hands, which is not beneficial for either its workers or its consumers.
It happens with the phones, with the big stores, insurers, banks, afp, etc.
A market order making the antitrust law effective and ensuring the growth of companies based on competition, reversing cannibalization or absorption, will allow in the future to regain market vigor, increase the number of transactions and spread risk.
A competitive market will allow the resurgence of sales activity, which currently, especially in markets with a high concentration of demand in few customers, has become an activity dominated by purchases where the price and costs associated with the activity of Customer sales end up degrading the market instead of improving it. Thus, retail sales activities are only administrative and operational as restockers, a seller who engages in administrative activities related to monitoring supply, customer contract costs, etc.
The solutions provided:
Fundamentally for the retail supplier companies that end up being satellites of their client due to the impact on their sales volume that large purchasing conglomerates have, the market is putting regulations and little by little the suppliers are organizing to counter the behavior Explicit monopsony that many buyers show in practice.
For more technical markets, the field is much more open and there is a more ethical and loyal competition to dedicate an adjective to it. This undoubtedly allows these markets to advance for the benefit of the market and future development. Here the seller is essential as an agent of change and, of course, a great catalyst and promoter of technologies, uses and functionality of products and services.
At both ends, the development and implementation of appropriate management models allows us to understand, in the shortest possible time, the dynamics of the markets in which their businesses are embedded, while providing tools that allow them, on a human scale, to incorporate sociotechnical systems that in their application they stabilize the growth and the proportional relationship with their clients.
It is necessary for small and medium-sized companies to begin gradually to incorporate management and control tools that allow them to capitalize on their great mobility and flexibility, proportionate to the size that large companies cost a lot.
Think of a market crisis in which big companies rationalize quickly and small ones end up getting the overflow of demand that big companies don't want or can't meet.
