GPI 045 – Financial statistics – chart number of monthly active customers: Are you growing or shrinking?

One of the most simple but effective charts to run is one that tracks the number of customers that the company sold to each month.  Is it declining?  Is it increasing?  Find out and watch the trend.  You want as many customers as possible to spread the risk of one major customer’s downturn or one jumping to another vendor.  Your firm needs to protect itself.  Chart this trend and plan your sales meetings accordingly.

Along with this chart, you might want to also chart average sales per company on the second X axis (right side of the chart).  If this does not make sense, chart it separately.  It is important that you are increasing average sales per customer if possible.  Why?  Increasing sales per customer means you are increasing gross profit per customer because you have limited fixed costs per month so if you can increase sales per month, fixed costs stay the same, the customer’s gross profit may stay the same but their net profit increases.  You want more customers, so consider a one-time bonus for new customers. (i.e. $500 gift card, etc.)