Sales are down this week. Why? On the brand side, that was the question I could
By Youval Peltier · October 24, 2026 · Curated by George's Blog
Sales are down this week. Why?
On the brand side, that was the question I could never answer fast enough.
Maybe I was low on inventory. Maybe I was out of stock on the hero SKU. Maybe a competitor dropped price. Maybe the category was down, and I was actually gaining share. Those are four different narratives, and they lead to four different conversations with my CEO.
Not knowing which one was true, quickly, was the most stressful part of the job. Because I still had to walk into the meeting.
Executives don't want a dashboard. They want a sentence. "Sales were down 8% because we were out of stock on our top product for five days; inventory landed Thursday, and the run rate has recovered." That sentence lets me walk into the room with confidence. A chart with a red line doesn't.
I remember my finance team asking, after a big month, whether they could expect the same invoice next month. The honest answer was no, because we were sitting on far too many weeks of inventory, and Amazon wouldn't order. Having that "why" ready turned a difficult conversation into a short one.
Here's what I insist on in every client deliverable we produce now:
1. The number and the reason together. Never one without the other.
2. The reason in one sentence, in words the CFO can repeat.
3. The distinction between something we did and something that happened to us. Those are different problems.
I built our whole analytics approach around this. Not because the charts are pretty, but because I know what it feels like to sit across from leadership with a number and no explanation.
The why is what I was buying every time I hired an agency. It's also what we sell.