Number of Products Sold
Indicator Phrasing
English: the average number of [specify the product] sold by the supported businesses in the past [specify the period]
French: nombre moyen de [spécifiez le produit] vendus par les entreprises soutenues pendant [spécifiez la période] passée
Spanish: el número medio de [especificar el producto] vendido por las empresas subvencionadas en el pasado [especificar el período]
Portuguese: número médio de [especifique o produto] vendidos pelas empresas apoiadas no passado [especifique o período]
Czech: průměrný počet [určete produkt] prodaných podpořenými obchodníky během uplynulých [určete období]
What is its purpose?
The indicator measures the amount of (promoted) products sold over a given period – an important indicator of the sellers' performance.
How to Collect and Analyse the Required Data
Collect the following data by conducting individual interviews with the targeted sellers:
RECOMMENDED SURVEY QUESTION (Q) AND POSSIBLE ANSWERS (A)
Q1: How many [specify the product and unit] did you sell [specify the time period]?
A1: ….. [specify the product and unit]
Alternatively, a more precise and recommended method is to ask the service provider in advance to record all of her/his clients on a record form provided by your organization or by another actor providing support to the service provider.
Calculate the indicator's value either by summing up the total number of sold products or by calculating the average number of the promoted products sold by the supported businesses.
Disaggregate by
Disaggregate the data by the shop location (urban / peri-urban / rural / rural and remote), districts (or other geographical division) and other criteria relevant to the focus of your intervention.
Important Comments
1) Keep seasonality in mind – the sales of products and services may be prone to significant seasonal variations determined by people's actual needs, purchasing power, access and other factors. For example, sellers of agricultural inputs are likely to record very high sales in the months before (and during) the agricultural season but their income shrinks in the remaining months. This means that you need to:
- ensure that your baseline and endline data is collected at the same time of a year, otherwise you might be comparing two incomparable data sets (e.g. sales in the ‘high’ and ‘low’ season)
- if this is not possible, you will have to ask the respondent to recall the sales from a comparable period. However, such data is likely to be less accurate as the respondents might not correctly remember the amount of products they sold
2) Consider using a complementary indicator assessing the financial value of the products sold: “average sales generated by [specify the target groups] from selling [specify the product] in the past [specify the period]”. To calculate its value:
- for each seller, multiply the total number of products sold by the unit price it charges
- add up the individual sellers’ sales of the given product
- divide it by the number of surveyed sellers who sell the product
3) You can either measure average sales (for example, sales per month) or the total sales over a given period (or both).