What Last Season's Sales Can Tell You About This One
Every small business owner knows sales can rise and fall throughout the year. These ups and downs are often tied to the season, what we call seasonal sales patterns. For example, a retail shop might have a rush of customers every holiday season, then slow down in the new year. Understanding these seasonal sales trends can be a game-changer for your business.
By looking at what happened last season, you can make smarter decisions for this season. The best part? You don’t need to be a tech wizard or have fancy software to do it. In this post, we’ll break down what seasonal sales are, why they matter, how to review last season’s sales in simple ways, what patterns to look for, and how to use those insights to plan your inventory, staffing, and marketing. We’ll also share easy tips to track this year’s performance (without any complicated tools). Let’s dive in and see what last season’s sales can teach you about the one ahead.
What Are Seasonal Sales and Why They Matter?
In short, seasonal sales are the predictable fluctuations in your business’s sales that happen at certain times every year. Many businesses see regular patterns, maybe sales always spike in summer, or perhaps they slow down each February. These aren’t random; they’re seasonal trends. For instance, retail stores typically see higher spending during the holiday-filled fourth quarter of the year. Another example: a sunscreen company will sell more in sunny summer months and much less in winter (since nobody buys sunscreen in a snowstorm!). Because these patterns tend to repeat annually, they are predictable changes rather than one-time events.
Why do seasonal sales matter? Knowing your seasonal cycle helps you plan ahead instead of being caught off guard. If you can anticipate a busy season or a slow stretch, you can prepare your business accordingly. Experts note that companies can use seasonality to guide important decisions like how much inventory to stock and how to schedule staff.
In other words, understanding your seasonal sales means you’re not guessing, you’re making informed choices. You can stock up on popular items before a rush, schedule extra employees during busy weeks, or save funds during the boom times to cover the lean times. In short, seasonal sales insights help you run your business more smoothly and profitably by aligning your resources with expected customer demand.
Simple Ways to Review Last Season’s Sales
You might be thinking, “I’m not an analyst, how do I review last season’s sales?” The good news is, you don’t need any special software or advanced math to do this. A basic, common-sense review of your past sales numbers can reveal a lot. Here are some simple, actionable steps to look at last season’s sales:
Gather your sales records. Pull together whatever information you have from last season (for example, last year’s monthly sales totals, weekly revenue reports, or even daily receipt totals). If you use a cash register or point-of-sale system, you might print a sales summary for each month. If not, bank deposit records or your own sales log can work.
List sales by time period. Write down the sales figures in order, either by month or by defined season (e.g. “Spring 2024: $X sales, Summer 2024: $Y sales,” etc.). You can do this on paper or in a simple spreadsheet, whichever is more comfortable. Seeing the numbers laid out will help you spot highs and lows.
Note special events or promotions. Beside each period, jot down anything notable that happened. Did you run a big sale in July? Was there a holiday in November that boosted sales? Marking these events will give context to any spikes or dips in the numbers.
Identify highs and lows. Look at your list and highlight which month or season had the highest sales and which had the lowest. These are likely your peak season and your off-season. For example, you might discover that December was your top month and February was the slowest.
Spot your best sellers. If possible, figure out what products or services drove those sales in the high periods. Maybe last fall you sold out of a particular item, that’s a best seller to remember. You don’t need detailed analytics; even a gut sense or a quick scan of receipts can tell you which things were flying off the shelves.
By walking through these steps, you’re essentially doing what savvy business owners do: using data from last season to learn. Use last season’s sales as a benchmark to set this season’s goals and to “find out what worked and what didn't” in your previous strategy. In other words, look for the successes you want to repeat and the mistakes you want to avoid. Was that June sidewalk sale a hit? Did your new product launch in September flop? Take note of it now. This review doesn’t require any fancy software, just your own records and a bit of time, but it provides a foundation of facts for better decision-making going forward.
Patterns to Watch For in Your Seasonal Sales
You’ve got last season’s numbers in front of you, now what? Now it’s time to spot the patterns hiding in that data. Not every fluctuation is meaningful, but many will be part of a recurring trend. Here are some key patterns and trends to look for:
Peak sales periods: Identify when your sales were highest. These peak times might coincide with specific seasons or events. For example, many retailers see a major jump in sales during November and December thanks to the holidays. Your business might have its own unique peak; it could be summer months if you’re a tourist shop, or perhaps spring if you sell gardening supplies.
Slow sales periods: Likewise, note when sales were at their lowest. Every business has slower periods. Maybe the weeks after the holidays are quiet, or a summer month when your customers are on vacation. These off-season times are just as important to recognize so you can plan for the lulls.
Best-selling products or services: Look at what was selling the most during those peak periods. Were certain items consistently popular last season? If you know what your “hits” were, you can focus on having those ready. Review last season’s data often “helps pinpoint best sellers” so you can ensure you stock enough to meet demand.
Effects of promotions or events: Think about any special sales, marketing campaigns, or events you had and see how they affected your numbers. Did a back-to-school sale in August give you a bump? Did skipping a promotion in March coincide with lower sales? These cause-and-effect insights are golden. If something worked once, it may work again (and vice versa).
External factors: Sometimes sales patterns relate to things outside your business. Weather, for instance, can be huge, a mild winter might have helped an ice cream shop stay busy longer, or a rainy spring might have slowed down a normally busy season. Local events or even economic conditions could play a role. Note if any outside factor seems to line up with your sales changes.
As you search for these patterns, you’re essentially looking for the story that last season’s numbers are telling. Often, you will find “recurring trends and fluctuations” in what customers buy and when they buy. Recognizing those recurring patterns is powerful because it gives you a pretty good idea of what’s likely to happen this season (barring any big changes in circumstances). The patterns you identify, your busy times, slow times, hot products, and effective promo, will become the basis for how you plan the months ahead.
Planning This Season with Last Season’s Data
You’ve identified some clear patterns from last season, great! Now it’s time to put that insight to work. The whole point of studying seasonal sales is to inform your decisions now, in the current season. As one business adviser puts it, using last season’s data as a baseline can help you set realistic goals and craft smarter strategies for this season. Instead of guessing what you might need, you can make evidence-based choices about inventory, staffing, and marketing. Let’s look at each of these in turn:
Inventory and Stocking
Your past sales can guide how you manage inventory this season. Start with your best sellers: if certain products were hits last season, consider stocking up on them before their peak time comes again. You don’t want to be caught empty-handed when customers are ready to buy. As a practical example, one holiday retail guide notes that reviewing last season’s sales helped pinpoint best-selling items, ensuring the business could have adequate stock on hand.
The same goes for any seasonal supplies, like a café making sure to have plenty of pumpkin spice flavoring if last fall showed it’s a customer favorite. On the flip side, knowing what didn’t sell well or what time periods left you with excess stock can prevent overstocking. If February was slow and you were stuck with unsold Valentine's inventory last year, you might scale back those orders this time. Align your purchasing with the patterns you expect: heavier ordering before anticipated busy stretches, lighter ordering before slow periods. This way, you invest your money in inventory when it’s most likely to turn into sales.
Staffing and Scheduling
Just as you plan inventory for peak vs. slow times, you should plan your staffing. Look at last season’s busy periods and make sure you’ll have enough hands on deck. If you know Saturday afternoons in December were chaotic in your store, consider hiring an extra part-timer or adjusting schedules to have more staff then. Many businesses, big and small, hire seasonal workers during peak times (for instance, large retailers often bring on temporary staff for the holiday rush). You may not need extra employees year-round, but for that one high season, a short-term helper could be worth it to keep customer service strong.
Conversely, for your slow months, you might reduce staff hours or plan team vacations during that time. For example, a landscaping company might have crew take time off in the winter when there’s little work, or a boutique might shorten store hours in the quiet early spring. The goal is to match your staffing level to the expected customer traffic – beef up coverage when you expect a crowd, and save labor costs when things are naturally slow.
Marketing and Promotions
Your marketing efforts will be much more effective if they align with your seasonal sales patterns. Think about timing your promotions to either boost the slow times or maximize the busy times (or a bit of both). Let’s say last April was very slow for you, it might be a great idea to plan a special spring sale or a marketing campaign in April to drum up business. You now know that’s when you need a push. On the other hand, if November and December are already your peak, you’ll still market heavily (to capture as much of the holiday market as possible), but your strategy might differ, perhaps focusing on standing out from competition rather than simply getting people to buy.
Also, consider the specific products or services: promote seasonally relevant items. If your past data shows people love buying gift cards in December, make that a highlight in your ads during the holidays. If summer is your top season for, say, outdoor equipment sales, start your marketing early in late spring to build anticipation. Remember to apply the lessons of what worked before: if a certain Facebook ad or local flyer brought in a lot of customers last season, use it again. Meanwhile, if you tried a promotion that fell flat, adjust your approach this time around.
The beauty of having last season’s information is that it takes much of the guesswork out of marketing, you have evidence of what resonates with your customers and when.
Low-Tech Tips to Track This Season’s Performance
Now that you’re gearing up for the current season, you’ll want to keep track of how things go, so that when next year comes, you have good information to review. The key is to make tracking easy and routine, especially if you’re not a tech person. The truth is, you don’t need high-end software to monitor your sales. In other words, simple tools will do the job.
Keeping a handwritten sales log is a completely valid way to track your business’s sales. Many small business owners stick to the classic pen-and-paper approach – essentially, you just record each sale as it happens. This old-fashioned method “remains useful” for a lot of businesses, and indeed, “you write down each sale, and it's as simple as that”. It requires almost no setup or expertise, making it perfect for those who prefer a tangible notebook over spreadsheets. The downside is it can become slow or prone to error if you have high volume, but for modest sales activity it works just fine.
Besides a notebook and pen, here are a few other low-tech (or easy-tech) ways to track this year’s sales performance:
Use a basic spreadsheet: If you’re comfortable with a computer, entering your sales into a simple spreadsheet (like Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets) can help organize the numbers. You can have a column for the date (or week or month) and a column for the sales total. The spreadsheet can automatically add up totals for you, and you can easily compare different periods. There are even free templates out there for basic sales tracking, but a DIY sheet with date and amount is often enough.
Calendar or diary method: Some business owners use a calendar to jot down daily sales or customer counts. For example, you might write each day’s sales on a wall calendar in the office or keep a small business diary. This lets you see patterns at a glance (e.g., every Friday is double a Tuesday, or that one weekend in June was unusually good). It’s low-tech, but it works as long as you’re consistent.
Save your receipts or reports: If you have any kind of cash register or point-of-sale system that prints daily summaries, start keeping those print-outs in a folder by date. Even if you don’t analyze them in detail now, you’ll have them ready to review later. Similarly, if you manually write invoices or receipts, keep carbon copies or a log. The idea is to not throw away the info that you’ll want at year’s end.
Record context along with numbers: This is a pro tip that can be done on paper or digital: whenever you notice something special about a day or week, note it down next to the sales figure. For instance, “March 15: huge order from X client” or “July 4 weekend: closed for holiday” or “Rainy week: low walk-in traffic.” These notes will be extremely helpful next year when you look back and wonder why a certain week was so high or low. They let you remember the why behind the numbers.
Set a routine to update and review: Make it a habit to update your sales tracking regularly, whether that’s daily or weekly. Don’t wait months to compile everything. A few minutes spent writing down sales at the end of each day or totaling them every week will save you a headache later. Plus, periodically glancing at year-to-date numbers versus last year can give you early insight if something is changing.
By tracking this season in a consistent, easy way, you’re essentially collecting treasure for your future self. When next year rolls around, you won’t have to rely on guesswork or memory, you’ll have solid records to compare against last season’s performance. And because you kept it simple, you’ll actually stick with it. Remember, the goal isn’t to create extra work; it’s to make sure you have the data you need, in whatever format works best for you.
