As a business owner, planning and managing sales can be a very hard task.
Sale seasons provide sellers with a great opportunity to clear old stock and improve purchases. Yet, the entire process can be very tricky and a wrong step can ruin the entire experience.
To make sure you don’t make mistakes during an overwhelming sale, we are here with 8 tips that can make it easier to manage orders without affecting brand targets.
8 Tips for Better Order Management
Below are 8 tips, we think you should consider to better manage orders during a big sale.
1. Understand Your Sales Trend
Analyzing your data and making decisions based on quantitative facts is very important. If you don’t know the trend of your brand sales and have only a vivid idea, you won’t be able to plan things properly. Therefore, as your brand grows, you should keep a record of all your products, sales, and services.
Managing orders during a hyped sale period is hard but if you have previous data to work on, you will be prepared for anything that comes your way!
You can use excel sheets to keep a track of your data. You can use graphs to graphically analyze your performance and help other employees understand where the brand is headed.
2. Use the Right Tools
Your website is an interface through which customers get to know your brand and make purchases. While ease of use matters immensely for a user, it’s also very important for you. If the order process is hard and lengthy and you don’t have any tools for data backup, managing a huge influx of customers will become even harder.
To avoid that, you should use the right tools on your website that make order management smooth and fast!
Let’s take an example. When you are faced with orders in large quantities accidents can occur. You might accidentally cancel an order. If you don’t have the tools to retrieve them you will lose your sales and will end up panicking. To prevent that situation, you can use a tool like the Magento-2 restore cancelled order extension.
3. Analyze the Market
Knowing your brand and having tools to efficiently manage orders is very helpful. Yet, knowing market trends and how they are changing is also very important. If you want to be good at management, you need to have the right knowledge of what is trending and what isn’t to make good decisions and plan well.
When you are collecting data to make a plan, you should know what products will be popular during the sale seasons. Then find out the number of potential customers who require a certain product. Also look at your competitors and see what they are up to.
4. Plan Sales and Inventory
After you are aware of market trends and have your previous sale data, you can work on making a solid plan. Based on your research you should make weekly sales plans during high-demand seasons. Make sure to keep a realistic approach and plan based on your data and what might happen instead of what you want.
Check previous year’s sale data and make alterations in your plans based on out-of-stock items, weather conditions, one-time promotions, etc. You can divide larger categories of products into sub-categories to easily manage them.
Once that is done, you should plan your stock for each month and keep a safe backup in case of spikes in sales. Make sure to avoid overstocking as you might be left with a lot of products that can be very hard to sell. Make decisions based on your data and you will be good to go!
5. Hire Temporary Workers and Maintain Positive Relationships
Certain seasons require you to hire new temporary employees to meet the growing sales demand. While hiring is a smart move, make sure to develop strong relationships with your new employees and be very clear about the rules.
Certain companies are not clear about the temporary nature of the job. That affects employee morale and with bad reviews and poor quality work your order management can take a strong hit.
Plus, bad reviews from an employee can affect brand reputation, therefore make sure your employees are happy and satisfied with their employment so things can be managed well from their end!
6. Keep Track of Markdowns
Sales are a great way to get rid of products that are declining in value. Many brands offer clearance or year-end sales to get rid of last season or old-fashioned items. Yet, if you don’t keep track of sales, your sales might lag behind the target.
That way the markdown (reduction in prices) may decline even further, below a preferred margin. You may even find it hard to sell your products and your inventory (active or available assets) may pile up. That can be very chaotic!
To prevent that, you should consider markdowns on your products as soon as you identify a poor performing item. Based on your target sales, you should offer discounts to get the best rates for poor-performing products before the markdown goes too low.
7. Use the Low Season to Recharge
During certain seasons when sales are low, you can take time to recharge and make plans. The low sale period can be a great opportunity for in-depth research. Make sure to use it wisely so you can better manage sales in the peak season.
During this time you should take feedback from employees and reevaluate your goals and strategies. You can come up with great ideas without the stress of the sale involved. The planning from this time can help you make decisions faster when the sale season arrives!
8. Get Expert Help
We can never deny the importance of experience when it comes to management and planning. If it’s possible, you should hire an expert to help you plan your sales strategy and manage sales in a short time.
Experts have years of experience and they know market dynamics well. They can use various analytic tools to help you decide your next move. If you cannot hire a full-time expert, you can work with a consulting company that can guide you better and help you manage sales.
Conclusion
In this article, we went through 8 tips that can help you manage sales during high-demand seasons. The first thing is to plan ahead. For that, you should have your sales data from previous years. You should also perform thorough research and know the market well.
To work efficiently, you should consider tools to work faster without errors. The right tools will automate manual processes, allow data backups, and improve work speed.
Sale seasons increase workload immensely therefore you can consider hiring new employees. If you do so, make sure to keep them satisfied so they can work in your favor. Another thing you should do is to keep a track of sales and apply discounts to control markdowns.
Lastly, you should consult with an expert or a company to get a helping hand. Their experience and advice can prove to be game-changers for your brand!
