This book is about pragmatic, management-oriented sales forecasting for entrepreneurs, small business owners, and middle managers faced with the kind of practical management problems that forecasting can help prevent. Its main focus is the real-world sales forecast done almost every day, not using technical analysis or sophisticated forecasting techniques, but rather common sense, experience, and industry knowledge. This is forecasting that respects the educated guess. The book is written for entrepreneurs and managers to help with practical and commonplace management issues. The sales forecast is a vital tool for management, even though it’s likely to be wrong. It becomes the foundation of the expense budgets and, through that, cash management. It begins by setting forecasting into management context. It isn’t about guessing the future correctly; instead, it’s about setting reasonable assumptions, getting them organized into a forecast, and then tracking and following up so that the difference between original forecast and actual results can be tracked and managed. A good forecast continues, every month, with regular review and course corrections. And that leads to better management. The process is something like steering, which is a matter of making regular corrections.
Keywords
Sales forecasting, sales forecast, forecast, business forecast, business plan, business planning, entrepreneurship, small business, small business management, plan vs. actual, variance, market segmentation, diffusion model, bottom-up forecast, top-down forecast, market forecast, market forecasting, moving average, weighted moving average, new product forecast, new business forecast, simple linear regression, unit sales, direct cost of sales, gross margin, variable cost.