Business Coach’s weekly trends tell you what is happening in your business so that together we can investigate the real cause of why these things are happening. This process is called 'Trend Analysis'.

Before you can understand patterns you need to deicde on the key performance indicators or 'KPI's'  for your business. 

When choosing which KPIs to track and use to explain recent trends, try to focus on things that might drive sales, be responsible for costs or impact your business in a significant way. There are a few different areas you might want to investigate specifcally. Here are a few example questions to get you thinking.

• which product categories are selling well?
• how are ’priority products’  (meaning those with the best margins) selling?
• which employees are performing the best?
• have you changed your margins?
• are you turning over stock fast enough or booking enough services?

Evaluating Recent Activities

You can also examine things that have recently happened at your business and see if these may be impacting your bottom line in any way.

• is your business in a slow season?
• have you recently run a promotion?
• have you recently added new staff members?
• have your recently changed your business hours?

Customer Segmentation

The best way to understand how your customer's behavior may have recently changed is by talking to them, breaking them into groups and creating a strategy for each. 

• do you know who your best and worst customers are?
• what percentage of your customers can be contacted?
• have you put them into segments or groups?
• do you have a strategy to get old customers back?

Other Ideas

Finally, there are some creative places to look for answers as to why your business performance has recently changed. 

• if your business has a physical store front location have you optimized its layout?
• have you checked with your customers to understand how they shop/use your space?
• do you frequently change up your advertising and merchandising strategies?