Today let’s talk about forecasting your sales/revenue.
Do it annually.
Do it quarterly.
Do it monthly.
At first, even do it weekly.
Almost any business could make a good educated guess about what their sales/revenue will be over the next 7 days. This is a combination of what happened last year during the same time frame and what happened last month compared to the same time frame last year. Make a guess, or make 3 guesses (best case, most likely case, and worst case). Write down your justification and reasoning for each of your 3 guesses. Revisit it in 1 week. See how you did with your forecast. Rinse and repeat for the next week. Once you start to get pretty good at weekly, go out on a limb and try for 1 month. Then a quarter, Then a year.
Once you are able to forecast reliably, you can better understand and envision what impacts your forecasts…what caused you to hit your worst case forecast instead of your best case forecast. Then, you can take steps to plan for your best case forecast next time.
It’s Independence Day. Do you think our nation’s founders spent all of their time analyzing what had already happened or do you think they spent more time planning to create the reality they most wanted?
Daniels Business Solutions 