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How To Present Sales Data

by Trey Pruitt

Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

When I need to present sales data with actual vs. target with data at the product and country level, I usually want to answer these questions (often in this order):

  • how did actual sales compare to target overall, both in absolute terms and as a percentage vs. target?
  • how did actual sales compare to target for each product, both in absolute terms and as a percentage vs. target?
  • how did actual sales compare to target for each country, both in absolute terms and as a percentage vs. target?
  • how did actual sales compare to target for each product/country combination, both in absolute terms and as a percentage vs. target?
  • what are the primary drivers of the overall variance?

The analysis I usually do is the following which can easily be done in Excel:

Actual vs. Target by Product & Country (September 202X)

Country Product Actual Target Variance Variance %
Country A Product A 661 522 139 26.6
Country A Product B 445 364 81 22.3
Country A Product C 100 97 3 3.1
Country B Product A 493 473 20 4.2
Country B Product B 807 677 130 19.2
Country B Product C 797 876 -79 -9
Country C Product A 929 947 -18 -1.9
Country C Product B 208 239 -31 -13
Country C Product C 896 743 153 20.6
Country A All Products 1206 983 223 22.7
Country B All Products 2097 2026 71 3.5
Country C All Products 2033 1929 104 5.4
All Countries Product A 2083 1942 141 7.3
All Countries Product B 1460 1280 180 14.1
All Countries Product C 1793 1716 77 4.5
All Countries All Products 5336 4938 398 8.1

Once I have this analysis, I summarize it with the following conclusions from the data:

  • Total Sales for September 2021 were $+4,526, which was $504/12.5% vs. target.
  • Products A, B, and C were $116/17.1%, $254/14.3%, and $134/8.5% vs. target respectively.
  • Countries A, B, and C were $259/19.6%, $150/9.8%, and $95/8.1% vs. target respectively.
  • The product-country drivers of the $504 variance were Product B-Country A ( $288 / 57.1%), Product C-Country C ($135/26.8%), Product C-Country A (-$94/-18.7%), and other Products/Countries ($175 (34.7%).

For year-to-date, I do the same process but replace data from September with data aggregated from January through September.

For extra credit, here are additional steps to find out why certain products and/or countries are above or below target:

  1. If you have actual data from prior period, it's useful to calculate the period-over-period change (e.g., this year actual vs. last year actual) as a helpful metric

  2. Look at units and average selling price (ASP) to see how actual compares to prior period and target (if data is available).

  3. Speak to the business owners of the products and/or countries to explore possible reasons why actuals are above or below target.

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