Hindsight Analysis for Small Retailers

There are key insights within your history waiting to be discovered. When you explore it with curiosity, it can be quite exciting!

Some actionable takeaways require tech assistance a la financial reports, point-of-sale dashboard, and spreadsheet functions. Others require your human input to put into context, answering two important questions: does this insight matter and do I care?

Whether you lead your end-of-period (EOP) reviews with acumen, empathy, or a blend of both, you’ll need a point of comparison in order to make sense of things. I’m a big fan of quantitative measures, comparing KPI goals with results. But I’m an even bigger fan of OKRs (objectives and key results) and process goals.

As you wrap up your EOP — fiscal 2024, Q4, holiday season, Jan… really any timeframe based on the 4-5-4 retail calendar — take time to assess the qualitative performance of your business.

🧭 Four Pillars of Merchant Method™: Develop business foresight
📚 Merchant Skills: Learn my goals-to-growth process
✏️ Your Assignment: How to apply your lessons learned
📌 Bulletin Board: Schedule your mid-year review

🧭 FOUR PILLARS OF MERCHANT METHOD
Strengthen big-picture thinking

The hindsight review process of this newsletter, which can be used to assess all Four Pillars of Merchant Method for Inventory-Based Businesses, helps you develop your business foresight.

New to the Merchant Method or need a refresher? Get oriented.
 
📚 MERCHANT SKILLS
Qualitative business review

​After you assess your financial EPO results, review how you got there using these six after-action review questions:

1. Goals: What did you say you were going to do during this time frame? What were your process or implementation goals at the beginning of the period?
2. Adoption: How did you take action? What did you actually put into place or do?
3. Successes: What process, system, approach, or timing worked? Why did those things work?
4. Challenges: What process, system, approach, or timing didn’t work? Of the things that were in your control, why didn’t they work?
5. Hindsight: What did you learn? In hindsight, what would you have changed? Do you think those changes would have resulted in different outcomes? Why do you think so?
6. Growth: How will you go about building on these insights during your next period of business — 2025, Q1, Feb?

This is a cyclical goals-to-growth process. If you answer, document, and review your responses to these questions consistently, you will develop and intuitively leverage your brand wisdom.

✏️ YOUR ASSIGNMENT
Look back to make forward progress

​Take up to two hours answering these questions. It’s likely you’ll need to review emails and process documents to refresh your memory because we tend to remember the negatives rather than the positives.

Take Action: Identify three key insights and find ways to incorporate them into your 2025 and/or Q1 plans to build on what you learned.

📌 BULLETIN BOARD
Improve your retail foresight

• Not familiar with the 2025 retail fiscal retail calendar? Read about the annual overview here.
• Schedule your mid-year review for AUG WKS 1-2. When you’re ready, use this process to take stock of your year-to-date.