You may have been told that you need sales performance reports to better manage your natural business, but where do you start?  That makes sense and it sounds like a good idea, but where do you begin?  First, it’s important to understand that not all reports are useful and that the wrong reports will only serve to confuse and distract you.  This is why you need to understand what the reports are telling you, how to read them, and how to use their insights to drive sales.

Before we dig into this subject you first need to ask yourself what is important – what questions do you need answers to?  Reports that do not help you achieve your specific objectives are a huge waste of time and money.  Let me say that again, the wrong reports will only serve as an expensive distraction.

What reports do you need to drive sales and grow your brand? 

The challenge is: Where to begin? 

A good place to start is to work backward from the key questions you are trying to answer. This is where most brands get stuck.  This article will help simplify this question.  It’s important to not get lost in the minutia. “Analysis paralysis” occurs when you try to solve big problems by analyzing too much data, resulting in a waste of time and frustration.  Instead, break the questions into “bite-size chunks”.

Let’s place the key reports into two different buckets, internal and external reports.  Internal reports support you and your management team.  They identify opportunities to build your brand, close distribution gaps, address pricing and promotion issues, understand market and category trends, etc.  External reports focus on your selling story and helping retailers grow category sales with your brand.

The key reports include:

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