Are you losing money and don't know?

One of the ways that I can make our business better is by doing measurements. I used to think that I was wasting time with some of this kind of work. I really wanted to spend time with customers and work more at selling the products that I had on hand.

What I have learned now though is that when I really look at different parts of our business, I find faster and easier ways to keep customers happy and coming back for more. Here's an example.

When your sales are good, it is easy to miss how much better they could be. But how much does it cost you when an item sells out and goes out of stock?

The math is pretty easy to figure out. If you normally sell 15 of a particular item each month, when you run out, you are losing one half of a sale each day. In other words, if this out of stock product sells for $10., you are losing $5.00 in sales each day. If it takes us a month to get it back, you will have lost $150. in sales for the month. If you offer 200 different products like this one, and you are out of stock on just 10% of the items that you carry, you would be losing $3,000. in sales each month.

Your numbers might be different, but take a minute to check how much you are losing by not having something available when your customer wants it? When you are selling any kind of product or service, you quickly learn that only a few customers come back to you later for the product that they missed the first time. When you have what people want, when they want it, you sell more, and your business grows faster. When you are out of stock on something, it is time to panic a little bit. Each day that you are out of stock on something that customers buy from you regularly, you are losing money.