Notes for owners · Sales management
Seven sales numbers to check each week, and what to do when one drops
Seven numbers a small business owner can read in ten minutes, with the first question to ask and the first thing to check when each one falls.
The GullySales team · Updated 17 Oct 2026 · 5 min read
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On Monday morning the orders figure is half of last week's. The urge is to cut the price or ring a supplier, and both are guesses. Seven numbers, read once a week, turn the guess into a question: enquiries by source, time to first reply, quotes sent, quotes that became orders, average order size, repeat orders from existing customers, and money collected against money promised. Ten minutes with a sheet is enough. The habit that matters is asking one fixed question when any number falls.
For how to define and lay out a compact set, read the seven-number sales dashboard. For the longer list owners usually argue about, see which sales KPIs to track. This post is about the response, and it leans towards cash and repeat business, which small firms often forget.
The seven and the first question for each
| Number | If it drops, ask first | Check before anything else |
|---|---|---|
| Enquiries by source | Did one source go quiet, or all of them? | Is the listing live, the number reachable, the ad running? |
| Time to first reply | Who was away? | Missed calls and unread messages from the weekend |
| Quotes sent | Fewer enquiries, or fewer turned into quotes? | The enquiry count above it |
| Quotes that became orders | Which were lost, and to whom? | The five biggest losses and what the buyer said |
| Average order size | Did a big customer skip a cycle? | The top three orders from the last good week |
| Repeat orders | Which regular names did not order? | Last order date for your top fifteen buyers |
| Money collected | Late payment, or an invoice never acknowledged? | Invoices sent and not yet confirmed |
Keep this at the top of the sheet. When a number moves, you already know where to look.
A note on money collected: compare it with what you promised to collect that week from the invoices you sent, not with sales booked. Booked sales can be strong while cash is weak, and only the second pays wages. Where a buyer's accounts team needs a purchase order number or a delivery receipt on the invoice, a missing paper is a common reason a payment sits.
One source quiet, or all of them?
A fall in enquiries means two opposite things. If every source falls together, the cause is probably outside: a festival week, heavy rain, a payment squeeze in your buyers' trade. Waiting is a fair response. If one source falls and the others hold, the cause is in your hands: an expired listing, a changed phone number, a stopped advertisement. Check the dull explanations first, because they are common and cheap.
The drop that a good week hides
Orders may hold steady because one big repeat customer topped up, while new buyers slipped. That is why repeat orders have their own line. A firm living on five old customers feels healthy until one stops, and then the fall is sudden with nothing new coming.
What counts as a drop?
Before you call anything a drop you need its usual range. Go back through the weeks you have records for and write the lowest and highest ordinary figure beside each number. Set aside festival fortnights and shut weeks. A figure inside the range is noise; a figure outside it two weeks running deserves the table. Skip this and you react to every dip until the sheet is ignored.
When a number does leave its range, write one line: date, number, and what you found when you asked the first question. After a few months that diary shows what actually moves sales in your trade, which memory rarely does, since memory blames the latest event.
A banana-chips maker in Thrissur reads a Monday
Imagine, as an invented example, a banana-chips maker in Thrissur selling to wholesalers in Kerala and Tamil Nadu and to a few hotel chains. One Monday the orders line was half the usual. The owner's instinct was to cut the price for everyone.
The table slowed the owner down. Enquiries and quotes were steady, but repeat orders showed two larger wholesalers had not reordered. The owner rang both. One had run short of cash after a slow week and would order once its own payments came in. The other had been quoted by a rival, and nobody had called since the last delivery.
They needed different answers. For the first, the owner did nothing but watch the money-collected line the following Monday. For the second, a visit and a listen to the rival's offer kept the account on a small change to that wholesaler's terms, not a cut to the general price. The changed terms cost margin on that account, and the first wholesaler took three weeks to reorder. A blanket cut would have given margin to every buyer to repair a problem sitting with one.
Where the seven fit badly
They suit a firm that sells to repeat buyers and quotes in writing. A shop with walk-in customers has no quote line, and a project business with two orders a year should watch the age of each open tender instead. If a number never changes what you do, remove it. If you keep wanting one that is missing, add it, but only after you can say what you would do when it moves.
Fill this week's column first
Copy the table into your sheet and enter this week's figures from your records, even rough ones. A rough figure now beats an exact one in a month. Sales metrics and KPI development is the service for settling the definitions so the numbers agree with each other, watching them is part of sales management, and when you want it set up with you, tell us what you need.
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