This is a guest blog written by Catherine Erdly.
Your next market is just around the corner and you’ve got everything packed up and ready to go. But have you set yourself a sales goal?
How can I set a sales goal for my next market?
Catherine’s top piece of advice
Make sure you are clear about how much you need to sell to make the event a success! Sounds obvious, right? Well not always – these events won’t be the same as selling on your website or in a shop or to re-sellers – so you need to do your planning beforehand.
Social Media is an excellent tool for promoting your event or upcoming markets. Check out our blog on the best creative hashtags to use, to make sure you get seen.
Selling means profit
How can I set a sales goal for my next market? Firstly, you want to make sure you get the most out of your time and effort. The first thing to do is make a list of all the events you’ve signed up to or plan to sign up to and give each event a target. Identify how much money you would be happy to take away at the end of each event. Now, the question I’m most often asked is – how do you decide that amount?
Everybody will have a different figure in mind, however to reach that figure you need to go through every single cost incurred and other considerations related to the effort required by you to do these events, such as your time.
For just one event, the list is long; cost of the pitch, bespoke labelling, bespoke signage, time you’ve had to take out of the business or away from family in order to do the event. How much time and costs are associated with boxing up all of your stock, any logistical costs, if you have to stand outside in the cold for a few hours (these are important considerations!), if you’ve had to pay anyone to help with these events and of course the cost of the actual goods you are selling.
Once you have your list, decide how much you want to make as profit from each event – be really clear! By using your list you can be sure about the amount you’d like to make as profit, as you will now know how much you need to make to break even.
How can I set a sales goal for my next market with unit sales?
Now you have that number, you can work back to get a unit sales target – for example if you want to clear £150 to cover £100 of profit and £50 of expenses and on average you make £10 profit per item, then you’re going to need to sell 15 items in order to hit your target. If it’s a five hour event, you need to sell 3 units an hour.
How can I set a sales goal for my next market? Break it down so that you have an hourly amount and target that you need to reach for each event. Unit sales = sales goals!
3 other reasons for working out your sales target:
- Planning for the next event
Having a clear sales plan for events will enable you to identify which events were a success and which were not. So, when you’re planning out your market season for next year, you already know which events this year made a profit and if any didn’t. Having your sales target for each event will make deciding which events to do each year more straightforward and fruitful. - How much stock to take
This process is essential for you to know how much stock to take to each event. If you don’t know how much you need to make and if you haven’t broken that amount down into unit sales, you won’t know how much stock to take with you to market.
If you need to sell 15 items to hit your target and in turn cover your costs and efforts then you know to bring 20 items – you don’t want to sell out before the end of the event, but also don’t want to bring loads of items home with you. Using a sales number will help you know how much stock to take. - Is the event feasible?
Knowing how much stock you need to sell to make an event a success will help you to identify if the event is feasible. For example, if you have to sell 500 items in order to hit your target – you will know if that’s feasible for you or not. You’ll know if you have that amount of stock available, if you can transport it and if the space at the event is big enough.
Other tips:
Another tip – many sellers create gift sets for selling at events. You can easily bundle several lower-priced items together and then sell them for a higher amount. This will increase the average amount that each person spends and help you to hit your target.
So my key take-away for you is that if you’re getting ready for a market, make sure you take the time to work out how much you want to make from each event, how much will make it worthwhile to you in your business, and therefore how much do you need to sell to make that happen.
I hope this blog post has helped to give you some structure and focus on how to get the best out of your next market – here’s to smashing your goals!
“How can I set a sales goal for my next market?” Blog written by Catherine Erdly, Founder of Future Retail Consulting, on behalf of Pedddle. To find out more about Catherine, visit her website at www.futureretail.world.
If you’re looking for further places to get your small business questions answered, check out our recent blog.