Once you plan which stores and products to target for promotion and you have confirmation of the promotion from your retailer/distributor, you need to determine how much inventory you need and ensure you have enough inventory in the correct locations to make your promotion a success.
Note: Before you begin, you will need to have determined the product(s) you want to promote and acquired a list of stores for the promotion. For instructions on choosing products and generating a store list, see Planning a display promotion.
For this example, let's say we are planning to run a promotion with KeHE for a chocolate chip cookie product at all Sprouts stores.
Steps:
- Determine your average sales quantity for the previous two weeks to get a baseline:
- From the dashboard menu, select the Sales dashboard for the retailer/distributor at which you want to execute the promotion (e.g., KeHE).
- Filter the dashboard for the previous two weeks, the product you want to promote and the chain at which you are running the promotion (e.g., Sprouts).
In the Details table, you can now see your average sales quantities for the chain's stores, which helps you know how much inventory you will need to keep the regular shelves stocked.
- Determine how much extra stock you will need for the promotion display. If you can, visit a store and estimate how much of your product will fit on the display based on your product dimensions. The store you visit doesn't have to be the same chain, as long as the display is roughly the same size. For this example, let's say 50 boxes of your cookies will fit on each promotion display.
- From the Details table, locate the average sales quantity column and add 50 units to the average sales quantity for each store.
Hint: You can export the Details table to Excel to more easily perform mathematical operations. Just select the Tile actions menu () at the top-right corner of the table, then select Download data.
- Ensure you have enough quantity in the store locations.
- From the dashboard menu, select KeHE > Daily Sales.
- Filter the dashboard for the product you want to promote and the chain at which you are running the promotion (in this case, Sprouts).
- In the weeks prior to the promotion, review the Quantity Shipped visualization to ensure there is a spike in inventory shipped ahead of the promotion.
- Review the Stores tile to see how many stores received shipments during that time period and compare that to the number of stores in your promotion list. In this case, we see we shipped to 319 stores.
- If the number of stores that received shipments is less than or great than the number of stores in your promotion list, review the Details table at the bottom of the dashboard to ensure all the promotion stores received adequate inventory.
- If you do not have enough inventory, reach out to the retailer or distributor and work with them to ship more product to the locations with low inventory.
- From the dashboard menu, select KeHE > Daily Sales.
- From the dashboard menu, select the Sales dashboard for the retailer/distributor at which you want to execute the promotion (e.g., KeHE).
Once you make sure your inventory is in good shape for the promotion, continue to monitor the inventory using these steps as your promotion progresses to make sure your inventory levels stay optimized.