If your Walmart sales have plateaued — or worse, started to decline — you’re not alone.
At Trend Results, we work with suppliers every day who feel stuck and frustrated by flat numbers. The good news?
Sales stagnation is almost always fixable — once you know where the problems are hiding.

Here are the three biggest reasons we see Walmart sales stall — and what you can do to turn things around:

1. Declining Instocks: Sales Can’t Happen Without Inventory

No matter how strong demand is, you can’t sell what’s not on the shelf. Even a minor drop in Instock % (for example, from 98% to 94%) can cause a noticeable dip in weekly sales — and it often goes unnoticed for weeks.

Common Causes:

• Supply chain delays and missed deliveries
• Inaccurate store-level replenishment data
• Warehouse shortages not communicated to replenishment teams

Fix It:
Monitor your Store-Level Instock Reports at least weekly (not just monthly).
Cross-reference your inventory levels against sales velocity to anticipate out-of-stock risks.
Proactively communicate with your Walmart replenishment manager about any supply chain issues — the earlier, the better.

Pro Tip: Suppliers who maintain 98–99% Instock consistently outperform their category peers by 10–15%.

2. Poor Item Visibility: Hidden Products Don’t Sell

Even if your product is available, if customers can't find it easily (in stores or online), sales will stall.

In-Store Visibility Problems:

• Modular resets moved your product to a less trafficked shelf
• Poor shelf positioning (bottom row, crowded slotting)

Online Visibility Problems:

• Search rankings have dropped
• Incorrect product categorization or missing keywords

Fix It:
After modular changes, physically verify your store placements or request store photos.
Work with Walmart’s online merchandising team to optimize your item pages for search relevance.
Monitor Walmart.com search results for your top keywords monthly — and refresh content if your rankings slide.

Pro Tip: Improving digital visibility can drive a 20–30% lift in online-to-offline conversion sales.

3. Slow Reaction to Data: You’re Finding Out Too Late

If you’re waiting until the end of the month to see sales trends, you’re already behind.

The top suppliers:

• Use daily or weekly sales reporting tools
• Set up real-time alerts for Instock drops or sudden sales dips
• Analyze deductions, OTIF performance, and returns weekly — not monthly

Fix It:
Implement real-time data tracking dashboards through Walmart’s Scintilla platform or a third-party tool.
Set weekly internal KPIs (not just quarterly reviews) for your sales, supply chain, and compliance teams.
Assign an internal owner (or partner with Trend Results) to manage and react to Walmart data continuously.

Pro Tip: Suppliers who catch performance issues within a week typically resolve problems before they impact buyer reviews or annual negotiations.

How Trend Results Can Help

At Trend Results, we specialize in helping Walmart suppliers:

• Build custom weekly and daily sales reporting dashboards
• Optimize Instock and modular placement monitoring
• Improve item visibility both in-store and online
• Catch and correct operational issues before they hurt sales