Mid-Year Review

 I have been doing a mid-year review past week for my business, i.e where I am tracking well and where I am behind against the goals I set earlier this year. Revenue is the obvious line to look at, but I try to give more attention to the leading indicators that build toward it, things like retention of current clients, knowledge growth and consistent implementation into practice, evergreen levers that produce new business (such as this newsletter). The lagging metric is easier to measure but the leading ones are what actually move the number because it builds right habits and behaviors that lead to desired results. 

So this exercise prompted me to write about the difference between a performance review and strategic goals review, and how either can make a big for any tactical decision they will make in the second half.

A strategic review vs. a performance review

I hope you have an ongoing cadence, most commonly monthly, on performance review: what the data says, what is working, what needs improvement. Standard iteration of actual vs. planned.

A performance review like this is retrospective and comparative. You take the results from the first half of the year and measure them against the goals, benchmarks, or forecasts you set at the start. It is diagnostic work, problem-solving , identifying for any course correction needed.

A strategic review asks different questions of the same numbers. Do the goals you set in January still make sense given what has changed since then? Are the things you are actually measuring telling you what you thought they would? Strategic review is generative rather than diagnostic. It questions the goals, direction rather than optimizing within it. Performance metrics tell you how well you are executing. Strategic indicators tell you whether the strategy still makes sense in the first place.

The reason to hold these apart is that mixing them makes optimization locally rather than think systemically. Performing well against a sound strategy means scale. Performing badly against a sound strategy is an execution problem. Performing badly against a broken strategy means pivot is needed. Performing well against a broken strategy, efficiently going the wrong direction, is probably the most dangerous because no performance review can detect because by its own metrics everything is green.

Without holding these apart, every miss looks like an execution failure, because execution failure is the only thing a performance review is designed to point out.

The other reason strategic review gets skipped is that execution pushes it out. We are just too damn busy. The proverbial the urgent takes priority over the important because repetitive and operational decisions have to be made.

Here is an example from my earlier years of Amazon consulting. A client wanted to grow 30% year over year at low seven-figure sales business on amazon. In annual planning we identified selling more to the same customer as a strategic lever, alongside the always important new customer acquisition. The client really grabbed onto the selling more to the same customer (so cross-sell or repeat buyer). The problem was that the product was not replenishable, it was something you buy for a child once a year. Selling more to the same customer was going to be genuinely hard for structural reasons. At that time Amazon also didn’t disclose a lot of data on repeat buyers, cross sells, there were no post-purchase promotions. We did hit the 30% growth (ok it was 29%, but really close!), but it was a hard road, and I do not think it was the most logical one. Leaning into seasonality way more, organic viral marketing, and email list would likely have gotten us there with less friction. I was earlier in my consulting years and did not push back hard enough during the annual session, client was very enthusiastic about the lever of sell more to the same person. And had we stopped at mid-year to ask whether the strategy still made sense, look at results through numbers vs. our tactical efforts. I think we would have pivoted. We would still have hit the goal, but through a different and better path.

The questions worth asking mid-year

Are the goals we set in January still the right goals?

This sounds obvious, but it’s always healthy to test goals set a while back against the set against a set of assumptions about the business, the category, the competitive environment, the platform.

The strategic question is whether the role Amazon plays in your business still holds. If Amazon was set up as a growth channel, is that still the right role for it, given how the rest of the business has evolved this year? If it was set up as a profitability channel, does that still fit the P&L structure? If it was a channel diversification play, has your dependency structure changed enough that the diversification argument looks different now? If it was a retail validation market for buyer conversations, are those conversations still happening, and is Amazon still the proof you thought it would be?

These are business questions, not Amazon questions. The changes that would move the answer are shifts in your own business (a new distribution deal, a category expansion, a pricing repositioning), any big supply chain shifts, regulatory changes.

The changes that should not move the answer are Amazon's tactical updates. Rapid AI developments, title character limits, catalog and reference pricing updates, etc. and etc, shouldn’t force a change of strategic direction.

Are we measuring the right things?

This is a health check of tactical execution, difference between metrics as targets and metrics as business goals. If ACOS is looked at as the primary advertising metric, and margin is under pressure, ACOS was probably not the right primary metric.

The reason to ask this question now is that changing what you measure changes what you optimizes for, and it takes weeks to see the effect. If you change the definition of success in July, it will take August and September operating against the new definition to start seeing reliable data.

What has changed on the platform, and how does that change our plan?

As always, Amazon platform is fast moving, so in addition to tactical adaptation it’s good to check the second-order assumptions you built your annual plan on back in December/January. Not all Amazon changes impact all brands: catalog changes and AI-driven product discovery changes impact all, expanded program of shipping dangerous goods to FBA impacts a small portion of sellers.

So it’s really stress-testing tactical changes not only against execution, but against does it put more risk, give more leverage, or influences our strategic direction on Amazon in any shape or form.

The review only works if it produces decisions

Nobody needs just an exercise in observation or a pretty presentation of numbers for Q1 and Q2. Mid-year review, or any review, isn’t worth it it if you look at what happened, you notice the patterns, and then you go back to what you were doing. This is why I frame the review as a set of questions rather than a set of metrics. Questions require answers, and answers, if they are honest, produce decisions, and also being willing to change the plan based on what the answers reveal.

The decisions themselves of post-review don’t have to be large, but aggregated across the Amazon business and executed within next 6 months can make 2nd half of the year more advantageous than the 1st one.

If you want a thought partner to work through your mid-year Amazon review, someone to ask the questions with you and pressure-test the answers, and come up with a solid roadmap for the rest of the year, hat is one of the most valuable conversations I can have with a brand at this point in the year. Reach out if it would be useful.

Saludos,

Irina