Complete Story
10/11/2024
023. Balancing Customer Service and Your Inventory Investment While Maximizing Profitability (afternoon)
Instructors: Jon and Matt Schreibfeder
Level of Complexity: Intermediate
1:30 PM - 4:00 PM
The goal of effective inventory management is to meet or exceed customers’ expectations of product availability while maximizing your net profits. And when you stock an item, you are making a commitment to have that item available, in reasonable quantities, for immediate delivery. Unfortunately, good forecasts and lead times are not enough to ensure consistent product availability. There will always be situations where you will sell more than you planned to, or you experience a delay in receiving a replenishment shipment. But how do you deal with the exceptional expectations? In this session we will explore developing an effective balance between meeting customer expectations and maintaining a reputation as a reliable supply by effective safety stock (i.e., reserve inventory) planning.
Topics will include:
- Managing your customers’ expectations of product availability.
- Different ways of calculating reserve inventory or safety stock and determining the most appropriate method for your specific situations.
- The effect of more or less safety stock on customer service, profitability and your inventory investment.
- Determining where you can reduce safety stock without harming customer service.
- How you can increase customer service and reduce backorders at the lowest possible cost.
Learning Objectives:
- Establishing customer service level, inventory investment and profitability goals.
- Fine tuning replenishment parameters to achieve your goals.
- Understand how to monitor your performance and make appropriate adjustments when needed.
Bookstore
Selling Through Tough Times
Paul Reilly
As a sales professional, you know that it’s harder to sell in tough times―whether it’s a recession, industry-wide challenge, or global pandemic. You may also have noticed that some salespeople and managers not only survive but thrive through tough times. How do they do it? What do they do to thrive through adversity?
Paul Reilly explains it all in Selling Through Tough Times: Customers buy differently in tough times, so salespeople need to sell differently in tough times. In this eye-opening and indispensable guide, he shows how to develop the right mindset and adapt your skills to prevail in even the most challenging selling climate. His plan includes both immediate, hands-on action plans (including six Daily Mental Flex activities) as well as longer-range strategies to ensure you (and your team) never get caught on the back foot again.
While the principles of selling are constant, Reilly demonstrates how changing your tactics in tough times will not only help you through current difficulties but help you emerge stronger. You’ll discover how to redefine value in customer terms, reposition products and services, and how employ different persuasion tactics. You’ll also learn how to select and pursue the right opportunities, win more deals, and―crucially―protect profit by embracing the “tough timers” mental attitude.
Tough times are inevitable and often unpredictable. But in Selling Through Tough Times, you’ll find the tools and mindset you need to power through them―and come out on top.
Visit www.ToughTimer.com and complete the 30-Day Tough-Timer Challenge.
