Assess your natural business opportunities with custom top-line business reports

Top-line business reports are useful. The reports give you a quick snapshot of how the natural category and your brand are performing. They also provide you with a quick look at your competition, their sales performance, the market and anything that might affect your sales. At first glance, top-line reports will answer some of your questions. Unfortunately, top-line reports are designed to work for everyone equally—including your competition. Top-line reports don’t provide you with the bigger picture and do not give you the competitive advantage you need.

The challenge is that your business is a lot more complex than any canned or top-line reports can address. Top-line or canned reports are very generic and do little to answer most business questions. Imagine reading a report that tells you that your business is healthy nationally but fails to identify threats and specific markets where you're losing share to your competition. Wouldn't it be more helpful to identify a potential threat before the competitors take your sales? The right reports will help you proactively manage your business and beat your competition.

The real business-growing questions

Here are several important questions you need to answer to effectively grow your business:

Report data you need

What information do you want to see in your reports? Custom reports provide answers to these questions and so much more. They are the key to the success of your business. Custom reports can be built to address every aspect of your business including, but not limited to:

Data in the natural channel is extremely fragmented. Hiring a true expert with extensive experience to help you identify the best resources and create your custom tools can be a significant cost savings compared to the potential missed opportunities from relying solely on canned reports and consultants who are not truly experts with the data and the resources. This investment in your business will have the biggest impact on your future success when planning your annual budget. Don't forget to allocate adequate funds for this crucial progress. Read my other articles to learn the best ways to maximize sales and compete more effectively.