Sales Research

Dr. Chitranshi Verma

 Sales are activities related to selling or the number of
goods or services sold in a given time period.
Sales include “operations and activities involved in
promoting and selling goods or services.”

Sales A sale is a transaction between two or more parties,

typically a buyer and a seller, in which goods or services
are exchanged for money or other assets.
Marketing includes “the process or technique of
promoting, selling, and distributing a product or service.”
Sales
 Sales
Research
 Sales research is a process usually by
a sales person or department to
research all information about the
Sales Research prospects or clients, their service,
competition any data that could inform
their sales outreach, upsell or focus.
  Sales research is the practice of generating insights
from sales data and trends to set targets and forecast
future sales performance.

Sales Research  Research should focus on improvement and

developing a strategy for improving the sales
performance in both the short- and long-term.
Sales Research
  Sales analysis involves analyzing the sales made
by a company over a period of time.
 Many companies have a weekly sales analysis, a
monthly sales analysis or a quarterly sales
Sales Research analysis.
 A regular sales analysis helps the company
understand where they are performing better and
where they need to improve.
  Sales research is done from the bottom level to the
top level of the company.
 Even the CEO of the company does a sales
Sales Research analysis to understand segments where the
company is gaining in sales and segments where
it is dropping in sales. Such sales analysis can also
help product development.
Sales Research
 1) Opportunities :
Sales research of own products as well as competitor
products is important as analysing sales of competitors
allows insights into the market from a different perspective
and may help the company to reach the missed out
customers and grab the missed opportunity.
Advantages of
Sales Research 2) Decision driver :
Sales research /analysis acts a decision driver for the
company to make major changes in their products. If the
Sales of a product are not up to the mark, the company may
discontinue the product with immediate effect.
 3) Customer Service :
Knowing the reason behind why a particular sales
occurred during particular time will help the companies
to keep the inventory ready and help them to serve the
Advantages of customers better.

Sales Research Delighting the customers will, in turn, benefit the

company by increased sales further and help to develop
goodwill and establish the brand value of the company.
 4) Marketing support :
Sales of a certain product may require one-time
marketing support or multiple times or seasonal support.
Those decisions are taken based on Sales analysis.

Advantages of
For example, products like cough syrup would require
Sales Research marketing and ad campaigns just before and during
winter while airline services require constant marketing
support.
 5) Helps in Insight
As the sales department is involved daily in selling
activities, they will have a lot more insight in the demand
side of the product. They will be clear in both – technical
aspect as well as sales aspect.

Advantages of 6) What works and what doesn’t

Sales Research Once the product starts selling, the after sales service
says a lot about the quality of the product. And this
service report is analyzed by the sales department as
well. Hence, the product management can know from their
sales as well as service department about which
problems are repetitive and need to be resolved
 7) Future requirements
Whenever the product management function takes a
feedback, it has to involve sales. This is because the sales
Advantages of department will know very well what kind
of differentiation is being expected in the market.
Sales Research Of course, the product managers have complete authority
to design the product as they see fit. But sales has to be
involved for complete feedback.
 1) Reliability :
A lot of times, sales analysis might have been done in a
haphazard way or the reasons for the increase in sales of a
particular product may go up purely on the effort of the
salespersons or offers rolled out. This may have nothing to
Disadvantages of do with customer or trends and relying on those
Sales Research conclusions can be problematic for the company.
 2) Technical knowledge :
High technical knowledge is required for Sales Analysis
and not everyone may be suited to do that. Good
arithmetic skills along with high market knowledge are
basic requirements and those may not be fulfilled by
every Salesperson.
Disadvantages of 3) Cost :
Sales Research A detailed Sales Analysis along with its interpretation is
outsourced by many companies. The dedicated firms or
software may be costly which the company would have to
bear regularly. Also, the privacy of data would be
compromised when sharing the Sales data to the third
party.
 1) Missed opportunities :

Analysing the available data can show the company

where it has missed the opportunity and if or not that can
be claimed.
Importance of Research plays an important role in this by presenting
Sales Research data to compare while the field force will prove of
valuable assistance in informing the practicalities of the
situation.
 2) Future decisions :
Sales data will help a company to take a future decision in
terms of inventory management, marketing activities,
schemes or offers to be rolled and changes in
manufacturing processes if applicable.
Sales Research Based on Sales data, major decisions like continuing or
discontinuing a product is taken. Those future decisions
will help the external stakeholders of the company to
decide whether or not to invest in the company.
 3) Market Trends :
Sales analysis will also show the current market trends to
the company while the company may be preparing to
launch a new product.
Importance of Sales Analysis would show a drastic increase in sales of
Sales Research the earlier product after an activity, showing that it was the
lack of awareness which was a hindrance in realizing sales
and not the product. Also, sales of a certain product may
skyrocket during a festival or decrease seasonally.
 4) Customer analysis :
Effectively, sales Analysis is nothing but customer
analysis. Answering why did a particular customer buy
the product in a particular month may give crucial

Importance of customer insights which will help with the planning of the
company.
Sales Research 5) Detailed analysis :
A detailed Sales Analysis is broken down product wise,
customer wise, year and month wise and geography wise
is a source of huge information for the company.
 1) Periodic wise Analysis :

Types of Sales This can be a month on month or year on year or year till
date compared to previous year till date as the need may
Research be. This gives insight into the impact of time on sales.
 2) Product wise Analysis :
Sales of products during different times in different areas can
be used. This is majorly used by companies having various
product lines . It helps a company to identify its strong or
weak products . Such analysis can be undertaken on the basis
of break up of products such as product variation by size,
flavour, colour etc.

Types of Sales
Research 3) Channel of distribution wise Analysis :
This will give the trend of where the sales are maximum and
answering why, will give more insights and help the company
decide whether or not to continue with the current channel of
distribution.
 4) Forecast vs Achievement analysis :
This gives the details of sales which were used to forecast
the numbers and inventory was arranged accordingly –
and what is the actual achievement of Sales – and whether
the inventory needs to refilled or schemes need to be
rolled out for the liquidation of stocks.
Types of Sales
Research 5) Territory wise Analysis:
This gives the detail of sales in terms of quantity, price per
unit sold, no. of customers region or territory wise. It
helps in identifying and comparing the sales
performance in various regions.
 6) Customer wise Analysis:
This analysis enables the company to identify customers
who account for larger proportion of sales and this data
can be compared with the proportion of time spent on the
customers like no. of sales calls etc.

Types of Sales
Research 7) Combination of above :
For more detailed analysis, the company may perform a
combined analysis of above.
For example: multinationals like Proctor and Gamble may
analyze the Sales of Tide detergent in Asia Pacific region
for the year 2018 and compare it with Sales of the year
2017. This involves Product as well as periodic sales.