Distribution is the foundation of sale success. Is your foundation solid or are parts of it crumbling beneath the surface? Using proven algorithms, the Slot Guardian system monitors the health of your slots, alerting you to potential issues while they can still be addressed.
The first step is to use historical data and proprietary algorithms to classify each slot into one of five groups — healthy, at-risk, declining, lost, and new. Each group requires a different action plan as we detail below.
- Healthy Slots — Slots with consistent orders and significant throughput. Consistent orders can vary depending upon volume of the product moving through the distributor and the shelf-life, but usually mean at least one order every 60–90 days.
- At Risk Slots — Slots with significant volume declines and/or erratic ordering patterns. These were healthy slots, but market factors have combined to lower order amounts or frequencies. These slots need additional volume to ensure they are retained.
- Declining — Slots that have seen a significant volume decline, but still retain enough volume and order frequency to be secure. These slots generally need further investigation to determine the cause of the decline. Some things to explore are competitive threats and private label encroachment.
- Lost — Slots that have not had orders in a specified time-period. The optimal time period is derived from the traditional order frequency, historical ordering patterns from that distributor, and shelf-life of the product. Lost slots are hard to regain, which makes shoring up at-risk slots so important.
- New — Slots that are less than six months old and have limited order history. Securing “critical mass” for these slots is critical as 50–80% of these slots will be lost in the first year. The most important goal is to get a distributor reorder fairly quickly.
Solidifying your distribution is key. Which would you prefer, an alert that a slot is at risk with 90 days to shore up sales, or a call 120 days later asking why the distributor is no longer carrying the product? If you want more information on how to assess and improve your slot health, contact us at 877-424-8725 or fill out our contact us form.