Sales - Which Customers have Stopped buying?

One of the most common reports we are asked for by salespeople is not what IS selling and who to, rather they are more interested in finding which of their regular customers:

• Are NOT buying - Often these are the easiest to sell to, or
• Are buying LESS - This may indicate you are starting to loose them

There are a few ways to do this depending on what level of detail you want to see :

1. Customer Card List - Snapshot of Customers Last Sales Date

2. Monthly Sales History

3. Pivot to see Monthly, Weekly or Quarterly Trends

4. Compare Sales to any Prior Periods to Identify a Decline in Sales

1. Customer Card List - Snapshot of Customers Last Sales Date

For a simple list of all customers including details of the Last Sales date and number of days since they last bought from you, see our Customer Card List Workbook.

• Filter on a Date Range to find Customers whose last purchase date was in that period or
• Filter on the number of Days since the customer last bought something

For more detailed reporting on Sales history and volumes try the following.

2. Monthly Sales History

While the Business Intelligence tool is designed to report on Actual sales made, by viewing Monthly Sales history you can see at a glance gaps where customers have not bought.
Sorting your Monthly Sales report by Last Sold Date is another way to quickly identify regular customers who have stopped buying.  

Using the Analyse Sales & Margins Workbook:

1. Run the Monthly Sales Report
   This is a Pivot style report that runs over the past 12 months of sales history.  Use the Order by button to sort your customers by Total Sales to see your biggest customers and check their recent sales pattern.
2. Copy the Monthly Sales Report to preserve the original and allow you to edit the new copy.
   
3. Edit the new Report to access the Report Designer 
   
   
   Add a new field and select  the Last Sales Date (by Month or by Day or by Quarter)
   
   
4. Order by Customer Last Sales Date
   
   This will order your customers based on their Last sales date with oldest at the top.  By using the Monthly Sales Pivot as the base report you can also then see each customer's past sales volumes and buying patterns.
   
   

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3. Pivot to see Monthly, Weekly or Quarterly Trends

Another way to see who has stopped buying over a longer period would be:
- Change this Monthly Sales report to a Customer Sales by Quarter (or Year or Week depending on how often your customers order from you but remember to expand the Sales Date Range using the Sales Date Filter to include prior years if doing by year).
- Order by Total Sales to sort your customers by the ones that have purchased the most or the least 
- Export to Excel to sort by multiple Quarters to quickly highlight the Customers who have stopped buying or are buying less than before.

4. Compare Sales to any Prior Periods to Identify a Decline in Sales

To find customers that are buying less or more than before use Comparison style reports.

1. Run the report - YOY by Customer -  To Compare Sales by Customer
2. The Standard Report compares
   - YTD  v YTD  in the Prior Year
   - Rolling 12 mths v Rolling 12 mths Previous Year
3. Click a column header to Sort by the Variance column to find Customers buying less or more  than they did in the  comparison period.
   
   
   
4. Click on a Customer name to drill down to Items sold to better understand what the customer is buying more or less of. Alternatively click on Edit to change the Drill down sequence to breakdown to Sales by Month or Product groups/Brands to investigate further.
   
   
   
5. Change the Analyze by field to Item Level or Brand etc to see a higher level view of your Sales to help understand changes in client buying patterns.
   
   
   
   

6. Salespeople more Visual and prefer Charts?

Run Cool Charts to see how customers and products are performing over time.

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