I was recently asked which reports are the best to look over every month. One of the things that you need to do to continue to develop as managers and motivators of people, is create good habits and routines. As the leaders of the business you need to get your own routine in place of how you finish a month and start a new one. I defiantly have a few reports on my list to run each month.
New/Lost Customer Report
This report will tell you the good and bad news from a customer standpoint. We always like new customers. You want to make sure that all new customers get a follow up from the salesperson saying thank you and more importantly what else do you need. Also, make sure the sales team calls back all of the lost or customers as risk. Find out why they have not bought anything lately. Was there something done wrong, if so, what can be done to fix it.
Customer Activity Report
This report is best used if you export right into excel where you can manipulate the data. I always like to see who had a really high credit rate. Is it an abusive customer or do you have quality issues causing the problem. Grade the good and bad performances by the customers. Who spent impressive amounts, which leads you to believe you are a leading vendor to them. Who under bought and needs to be added to the call list to work on selling them more parts.
Nobody likes to make cold-outbound phone calls but both of these reports are warm calls. These people already have history with your company. This makes your calls easier and tend to be the most productive type of outbound calls.
Vehicle Report
This report will help you track your projected sales by vehicle. Having accurate projections will help you predict future sales. Knowing future sales allows proper planning to occur in your business. Make sure that all vehicles have the projected or anticipated sales updated in the vehicle record. Also have a calculation to set the actual in-stock sales goal based off of the amount of inventory available to sell. That will then allow you to calculate your brokered, warranty, core deposits & freight sales for the company. Once you know the realistic numbers you can set sales goals above that number.
Monthly Sales Report per Salesperson
Knowing the tract record of each salesperson is important. Do a recap from the prior month and look at what the individual sales goal for each of them should be. Then see how those numbers add up and compare to the company sales goal. Do you have enough inventory and salespeople to accomplish the sales goal? The monthly sales breakdown for each person is something that should be discussed with them. What areas are they strong in and what areas do then need to work on? What is their warranty percentage? Is there brokered percentage high enough? Do you need to work with them on their closing skills? Are they paying attention to the screen recommendations they are given?
Vehicle Report vs. Vehicles Inventoried
You know the number of vehicles purchased from the vehicle report you did earlier, but you need to know how many of the vehicles purchased have not been inventoried yet and also the number that are waiting to be dismantled. Knowing the number to be dismantled will let you do some quick math to determine how many weeks of backlog you are sitting on. This number has a direct impact on the service level you are giving to the customer and delays can be very costly when dealing with a trading network. Reputation for delivering on time can mean more than price to a lot of people when it comes to who they are brokering from.
Purchase Order Report
It is easy to see the total amount of profit you had but also take a closer look at the number of transactions and profit per transaction. Are you trying to kill the customer on the amount you make or are you working for no money? Everyone has a different idea on brokered profit. I want to say yes to the customer but make a nice profit per transaction. ($75 – $100 minimum) Make sure that there is some balance on the sales team. They all answer the same calls and have the same resources available to them. How do you get more out of each of them without knowing what they are currently doing?
Those are a few reports that I have always found value in running and studying. As is always the case, the next step is the most important. That step is what you do with the information. Until next month – keep those question coming.
Mike Kunkel Lee Worman
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