Creating Sales Forecasts
If you’re like most entrepreneurs, you hate to make forecasts for your business. People don’t like forecasting because predicting the future greatly enhances their chances of being wrong.
So what can you do? The answer is educated guessing. Here are some tips for making that guess as accurate as possible.
- Trust your expertise. Are you an industry expert? Do you have an industry expert on your team? If so, trust yourself or your expert.
- If you aren’t an expert, find one. The title says it all. You should have at least one expert on your team, either as an employee, partner, investor, board member, advisor or consultant.
- Get sales data where you can. There are plenty of resources out there. For example, you can do an online search for “sales per square foot.” If you’re developing a plan for a retail store, you can get some clue as to what sales might be by looking at other businesses’ sales per square foot.
- Break your forecast into pieces. Find a meaningful way to break a sales forecast down into smaller variables you can get a hold on.
Photo by MSDesign.
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