If you were responsible for supplying an area of bike shops and had to prepare a presentation on your plan to grow sales in the market area, what would you focus on?
Bikes?
Bikes or bits.
Bikes and bits, aim high.
Trends and forecasting. What's selling, what isn't, at what price points is stuff selling, what are the margins on the areas you identify. What's going to be the next gravel?
Customer profiles - who's spending money and what are they buying.
Focus on facts and numbers.
Those shops in your area that are selling less than the others.
Locations of competitor shops.
Demographics / populations / catchments of the shops and what that means for potential growth, ideally related to the points above.
Yeah I’d be getting stats of what is selling and compare to your area, look for the easy wins. I don’t know what the KPI’s are in the bike industry but that’s what I’d look at. With lack of supply is it all about letting people know you have stock, and what it is. If they are independent shops I’d be looking to support them growing an email database.
- Identify and rank all potential clients (bike shops) by opportunity
- Identify top brands selling in the categories you are selling. What are price points, estimated demand/sell through, market share?
- How does your offering compare to incumbent brands in terms of price, desirability, availability?
- Conversion ratios at each stage of the sales process from identification, initial contact, meeting, proposal, sale, repeat business. Can you create enough data in a quarter/is there similar data already in your business to build this model and then a backwards plan to achieve revenue targets?
What you're aiming for is to develop a solid sales plan and all the influencing factors/executable steps to achieve it. Loads of free online resources to help you with this. On a not unrelated note, average standard of sales planning/strategy in the bike industry is appallingly poor so if you do this right, you'll have a huge jump on the competition.
Good luck 👍
Surely stock is king at the moment. You could have the best product in the world but if you can’t supply it, it ain’t worth shit.
see the bird/ethic thread. Loads of interest, maybe available 2023…no bike or component is good enough for me to wait that long for.
Assuming you have something that's sellable and you have stock.. All the data in the world won't help if you don't have a great relationship with those shops. Ask them what you can do to help their businesses grow and make sure you have all the options your company can back you with. Follow up on everything you say you'll do, every time, without fail. I'd work on the 80-20 rule to begin with but make sure you're talking to all of them.