In most companies in the aftermarket sector there is a tacit assumption: sales are being lost. What is interesting is not that assumption, but the fact that the magnitude is rarely known. And when a problem has no magnitude, it stops being a business problem and becomes merely a perception.
A missing equivalence, a product outside the range, a reference out of stock or a non-competitive price. Each of these situations results in a sale that does not happen, but since it is neither recorded nor analysed, it simply dissolves into daily operations.
The company keeps running, the team keeps working, and revenue keeps coming in. The problem exists, but it does not carry enough weight to trigger a decision.
As long as the impact is not quantified, the conversation remains in the realm of intuition. “We must be missing something”, “it cannot be that much”, “it has always been like this”.
The moment a figure is placed on the table, the conversation changes in nature. It stops being operational and becomes strategic, not because the problem has changed, but because it now has economic dimension.
Companies do not prioritise problems by their nature, but by their economic consequence. The same operational issue can be irrelevant or critical depending on its economic weight, and that weight is only known when it is estimated, even approximately.
Without magnitude there is no urgency, and without urgency there is no decision.
In very general terms, the impact of sales that are not converted is usually far higher than most companies imagine.
The lower the level of action taken on unconverted sales, the higher the economic impact tends to be. In environments with little action, the range is typically around 5–10%. With partial action, around 2–5%. And when action is systematic, the impact is clearly reduced.
These are not exact figures. They are orders of magnitude. And orders of magnitude are what turn a perception into a decision.
When a company puts the figure on the table, it regains control over the decision.
If you want to put a number where today there is only perception, we have prepared a simple simulator to estimate the economic impact of sales that are not being converted. It is not a commercial proposal; it is a reflection tool.
Because magnitude is what transforms a problem into a decision.
By Joan Cabós
CEO & founder