The Key to Selling Confidently

With the summer full of trade shows and sell-in appointments, are you drowning in buyer and style analysis? We know you want to go to your meetings confident and prepared, but the hassle of getting the reports ready can be a tedious process. Once you have accomplished the feat of gathering all the data, you then have an even greater task of creating a smart and confident sales strategy for your buyers.

But what if the first step was eliminated? How effective would your sales strategy be then? You could quickly check on up on data reports to see what styles are working and where your buyers margins are rich. You could also look at what product categories have a low sell thru to better improve your retailer’s strategy. With all of this quick access of easy to run reporting and analyzing, your buyers will feel known and valued, and you will feel confident! 

Well, we have great news for you. This scenario no longer needs to live in your imagination - it can be real for you and your team!

With our Meeting Prep tool you have reports at your fingertips and easy to run reporting tools with all product categories.  A few of our clients favorite features are:

• Customer dashboard to quickly show top sellers
• Visual Top Products to detail best sellers by product category with images
• Yearly comparison by style or category for each store
• Open order reports 

By having this confidence boosting tool in your hand, you can now invest your time on strategies that will guide your buyers to maximize their margins and sell through inventory. 

But, let’s take it a step further. As markets continue to expand, planning for the omnichannel environment is crucial to your sales strategy. With technology always on the rise, we see e-commerce continuing to grow. Apparel Magazine recently conducted a report that ecommerce sales have increased 51% over the past five years and it’s expected to grow another 42% in the next 5 years. However, we can’t solely look at ecommerce and think we can copy and paste the sales strategy to every channel. While ecommerce is probably where you need to first focus your attention, managing the sales and inventory for every channel is important if you want to be smart and strategic with your brand. After all, inventory is still being booked to drive those channels and each channel is going to have a different customer, so it’s important that you can intelligently speak to both. 

To help with report analysis in omnichannel environments, we suggest looking at the brand as a whole, then dig into their main channel and follow with the remaining channels, but all separately. Four analytical tactics to guide your strategies are: 

• Name the top 3 and the bottom 3 products so it’s clear and effective of what is and isn’t performing for your buyer. You can take a deep dive into what is working and what is not with RepSpark’s Top Products Report. The report allows you to look at the reports as a whole, then by product category, color options and pricing strategies. Now you can get down in the details and confidently guide your buyer into the ultimate buy. 
• If your retailer has a brick and mortar location, visit the space and view the merchandise to see how it is displayed. This may or may not give you an indicator into the sales performance, but it will allow you to speak into new opportunities. 
• Observe your buyer’s competition. What items are they promoting and how are they merchandising their products? What brands are they supplying? Being knowledgeable is the key first step to understanding the scope of your buyer's business.
• If you have the product samples on hand, hang up each sample from best to worst sell thru’s then take a step back. Then do this for each channel and document what you observe. If you see a large drop in performance, start a new row or line to scrutinize the different products. You can easily do this and take the analysis with you to sell-in appointments by doing this on our Whiteboard tool.

By taking the time to focus your energy on smart selling strategies, you will help the reputation of your brand soar! Your sales reps will be known for their intelligence and your product will be known as the brand that makes buyers rich. 

If you are ready to take your sell-in appointments to the next level and create a smart omnichannel strategy for all of your retailers with ease, schedule a demo today!