---
title: "Sales English Plain Talk (Part 3) Chapter 1: A Brief Discussion on Sales Analysis"
description: "This article is the third chapter of the series 'Sales English Plain Talk' by Mobius, originally written for internal use at SMI Consulting. It discusses sales analysis, focusing on retail POS data analysis, explaining key concepts such as comparable store sales, year-over-year and month-over-month comparisons, and various comparison methods."
author: "墨比斯"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
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published: "2016-12-22"
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# Sales English Plain Talk (Part 3) Chapter 1: A Brief Discussion on Sales Analysis

> This article is the third chapter of the series 'Sales English Plain Talk' by Mobius, originally written for internal use at SMI Consulting. It discusses sales analysis, focusing on retail POS data analysis, explaining key concepts such as comparable store sales, year-over-year and month-over-month comparisons, and various comparison methods.

"Sales English Plain Talk" is a series of articles written by Mobius for internal use at SMI Consulting in the early years. When our editor recently reread them, they found more meaning and fun beyond sales and English, so they organized and shared them with everyone for enjoyment~
# _Chapter 3_ **A Brief Discussion on Sales Analysis**
Sales volume is the result of all our sales actions, known as a "lagging indicator" in the field of sales data analysis. Sales analysis is an unavoidable task for salespeople, ranging from at least once a month to as often as once a day.
Despite the high frequency of sales analysis, it's not common to find salespeople who are truly proficient at it. Often, they resort to the "three basic moves" of summarizing, averaging, and comparing year-over-year or month-over-month, then hastily create a line chart, going through the motions without real insight.
Sales analysis is a vast topic, often requiring hundreds of pages of PowerPoint presentations. This article cannot cover it in detail, so I'll share a few insights using retailer data analysis (POS data analysis) as an example.
● Retailer Sales Analysis
Here's an excerpt from a Reuters report:
_Discount retailer Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. announced Thursday that sales at established locations rose 2.4% in October compared to last year, not including the impact of fuel sales... Total sales for the month increased 2.3% from the prior year. Looking ahead, Wal-Mart expects U.S. comparable store sales for the month of November to grow between 1% and 3%._
This news sounds like a business review, showing that even journalists can't escape data analysis.
Two terms in the article need explanation: Established Locations and Comparable Store. These refer to the same thing, which salespeople call "old stores."
Old stores refer to stores that have been open for more than 12 months and have historical data from the same period for comparison, i.e., "comparable stores." Foreigners use "location" to refer to stores, similar to how we say "points of sale," hence the term "established location."
Similarly, you might hear foreigners say, "Carrefour operates more than 100 locations in China," meaning Carrefour has over 100 stores in China.
Comparable Store, often abbreviated as Comp-store, is a very common term. Another term is Same-store, which is also occasionally seen. The concept of old stores arose primarily because of the comparison methods used in data analysis by retailers.
Retailers place more importance on year-over-year comparisons than month-over-month, as comparing with the same period last year is more meaningful due to similar seasonal factors, making the comparison more convincing.
If you switch to month-over-month (m/m), for example, comparing October data with September, the numbers would undoubtedly look good, but it's not very meaningful because it's obvious that October sales are better than September's. Comparing with October last year makes it easier to judge the level of business development.
Year-over-Year and Month-over-Month
Let's explain the terms for year-over-year and month-over-month. Year-over-year (abbreviated y/y) compares with the same period last year; month-over-month (m/m) compares with the previous month.
If you're thinking of quarter-over-quarter rather than month-over-month, the same logic applies: quarter-on-quarter (q/q). Here's an example: "Tesco sales growth rebounded to 1.7% quarter-on-quarter (q/q) in the third quarter of 2008."
Retailers also have their own expressions:
At Walmart, you might hear a Chinese employee say, "This month's sales comped 15 points," which translates to "sales increased 15% compared to the same period last year." The term "comp" has evolved from an adjective abbreviation into a verb meaning "compare year-over-year," showing how language evolves in everyday use.
Carrefour and other retailers use the term LFL, which stands for "Like for Like," meaning the same as year-over-year, comparing like with like. What is comparable? Only the same period is comparable. Here's an example from a procurement professional's resume found online:
"In January 2046, formulated the 'Chinese New Year Delicatessen Special Sale Project,' implemented in February, with LFL growth of 25% (3.3 million) and gross profit growth of 2%."
To conduct sales data analysis, you need to master a few basic POS data elements and formulas. Using the Comp-store as an example:
Basic Data Elements: Store sales by day, week, and month. With this data, we can at least perform the following analyses:
**1. Comparison to Target:** The planned sales versus the actual sales.
Sales targets can be called "the planned sales" or "sales target." Retailers like Carrefour, 7-11, and Lotus use the term "Budget" to refer to sales targets.
Some also use "goal" or "objective." Let me elaborate on these two terms. When I first started working, I encountered confusion between them. For example, the elements of strategy formulation are OGSM: Objective, Goal, Strategy, Measures. I've seen various translations for objective and goal, which often seem odd and confusing.
Objective is broader and often used for qualitative statements, such as becoming the largest distributor in the Changchun region. Goal, on the other hand, comes from football scoring and tends to be more specific and quantitative, such as achieving annual sales of 120 million or profits exceeding 10 million.
So for the OGSM mentioned above, I think it's appropriate to translate as: Direction, Goal, Strategy, and Measures.
**2. Comparison to the Past:** "Week-over-week" comparison: This Year This Week (TY-TW) versus Last Year This Week (LY-TW).
As mentioned earlier, retailers love year-over-year comparisons. Most retailers manage on a weekly basis, so it's not surprising they like to compare this week with the same week last year.
Following the terminology in the "Year-over-Year and Month-over-Month" section, this weekly comparison can also be expressed as week-on-week, abbreviated as w/w. The "old stores" (Comp-stores) mentioned earlier have sufficient data to compare with the same period last year.
In the retail industry, well-managed retailers typically retain at least 53 weeks of weekly POS data to enable week-over-week comparisons.
Similarly, we can also see "month-over-month" calculations: This Year This Month (TY-TM) versus Last Year This Month (LY-TM).
**3. Comparison to the Past:** "Year-to-date" comparisons, such as This Year Year-to-Date (TYTD, or TY-YTD) versus Last Year Year-to-Date (LYTD, or LY-YTD), reflecting sales from the beginning of the year to the present, compared with the same period last year, showing whether sales are up or down.
However, "Year-to-Date" is a bit ambiguous, mainly because of the word "Date": it originally means day, up to the day of the statistic; but in practice, it often refers to the current week or month, not just the day.
It seems more appropriate to use a more specific term like Year-to-Month (YTM). The above two methods of comparing with one's own past are also called vertical comparison.
**4. Comparison to Others:** Comp-store sales versus competitive Comp-store performance. Comparing with competitors' old stores. If comparing with oneself is vertical comparison, then comparing with competitors is horizontal comparison.
To summarize, we've mentioned three comparison analysis methods: comparison to target, comparison to historical, and comparison to competitor. In the next article, we'll provide an example to reinforce these concepts.
Read the "Sales English Plain Talk" series, and you'll find more fun beyond sales and English!
**Source: Weizhi**
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