The 5 sell-out indicators to have on hand before any commercial negotiation

For a Sales Management team, negotiation preparation determines the entire year.

Yet it often remains a low-visibility exercise: heterogeneous data, incomplete reporting, differences in interpretation between retailers…

This makes it difficult to build arguments, difficult to anticipate, and difficult to defend the true value of your categories.

Access to sell-out data radically changes this equation.

For the first time, manufacturers have a faithful mirror of their actual performance: volumes effectively leaving warehouses or stores, sales velocity, assortment dynamics… all elements that are impossible to dispute and, above all, essential for building a solid, balanced, and growth-oriented negotiation.

Among all existing indicators, five KPIs are decisive for a Sales Management team. They structure the diagnosis, refine your strategy, and provide you with quantified, shared, and indisputable arguments.

The dynamics of your sold volumes: understanding true in-market performance

Before entering negotiations, you need to know what is really happening in stores or warehouses: which SKUs are performing, which are slowing down, and where underperformance needs to be corrected.

Sell-out volume analysis makes it possible to immediately identify:

• growing SKUs that deserve to be consolidated or given greater visibility;

• underperforming stores or warehouses;

• geographic areas where your assortments lack visibility.

This KPI prevents discussions from being based solely on sell-in volumes, which are sometimes inflated by distributor overstocking. As highlighted in reference articles, this lack of in-market monitoring too often leads to product delisting.

Distribution coverage and assortment completeness

Sales Management teams see it every year: discussing pricing or promotional support without mastering the actual level of assortment presence becomes an impossible exercise.

Thanks to sell-out data, you can map:

• SKUs that are absent or at risk in certain areas;

• activation gaps between retailers;

• slowdowns in performance that justify a targeted support plan.

This KPI transforms negotiation preparation because it allows you to link every request made to the retailer to a tangible reality: the value your assortment represents in their market.

The true effectiveness of promotions and their ROI

Too many promotions are still seen as purely tactical levers. Yet they are a true growth driver—provided their ROI is measured accurately.

Sell-out data finally provides access to:

• incremental sales generated by the activation;

• potential windfall effects (retailer overstocking);

• SKUs that genuinely recruited end consumers;

• points of sale where the mechanics were most effective.

The benefits are twofold:

– you enter negotiations with a clear, shared, and quantified track record;

– you avoid investing blindly in low-return activations, an issue already highlighted in promotion performance monitoring.

Analysis of discrepancies between retailers

For a Sales Management team, comparing your performance across retailers is one of the most strategic advantages of sell-out data.

By harmonizing all data—something very few manufacturers are able to do manually—you can:

• objectively assess performance differences for equivalent assortments;

• highlight and reward the most efficient retailers;

• challenge underperforming ones with hard data;

• negotiate based on strictly comparable elements.

The ability to speak the same language as the retailer, using verified indicators, streamlines the relationship and strengthens your commercial credibility.

This is, moreover, a key point highlighted in field feedback on the use of KaryonFood.

Identifying SKUs at risk of delisting

During negotiations, this point can be a deal breaker.

Manufacturers know it: delisting is never trivial. It leads to an immediate loss of revenue and can durably weaken the brand.

For Sales Management teams, anticipating these risks is essential.

Thanks to sell-out data:

• you can instantly spot SKUs whose sales are slowing down;

• you can identify retailers where delisting is likely;

• you can prepare corrective actions (promotions, field support, range repositioning).

As highlighted in articles from your knowledge base, 80% of manufacturers do not monitor these signals closely enough due to a lack of consolidated data, even though this is a critical lever for influencing discussions and avoiding relationship breakdowns with retailers.

What these 5 sell-out indicators change in negotiation preparation

With these sell-out KPIs, the Sales Management team gains:

• a clear and objective view of market reality;

• indisputable arguments based on in-market performance;

• a more balanced power dynamic with each retailer;

• a concrete action plan to secure revenue and prepare for the year ahead;

• stronger collaboration between Category Management, KAM, and regional teams, all aligned around the same data.

Negotiation moves away from gut feeling and into a logic of shared performance steering, benefiting both parties.

This is exactly KaryonFood’s ambition: to make your data actionable, comparable, and immediately usable to guide your decisions.

Would you like to prepare your upcoming negotiations with an unprecedented level of precision?

KaryonFood centralizes and harmonizes all your sell-in and sell-out data, automatically calculates these five indicators, and delivers ready-to-use dashboards.

👉 Request a demo and discover how each KPI becomes a concrete lever to secure your commercial agreements.