Businesses that don’t forecast sales inevitably fail
Less than 50% of businesses survive more than five years. Visit government census or Depart of Industry web sites and if you look hard enough you will see irrefutable evidence
The authorities common reason for death is the failures just ran out of money. This deliberation is useless and so I decided to find individuals directly and indirectly connected with failed businesses to see if I could discover the details, establish any recurring reasons for failure and post them on the net in the hope that my results would help others avoid a similar fate. I discovered eight consistent reasons for business death. Here are three of them:
No Vision, mission or strategy
“If you haven’t a clue where you are heading for then how are you going to get there?” You have to have a clear picture of what you want to achieve and how the environment will be for your business if you achieve it. To achieve anything you need a strategy. Strategy is like a route map it shows you how to get there. It’s a systematic series of activities. Strategy is only effective if it is translated into a business plan which can be used as a benchmark for business performance. A key tool for tracking and measuring business perfomance is the sales forecast.
Lack of a system for marketing or sales
Marketing is about exploring markets and testing strategies to position your proposition in the minds of prospects and moving them into your sales channel. Sales is about engaging the prospect and getting them to buy your product or service. Marketing is a process of measuring and refinement of the tactics you employ to attract prospects. selling is the process of creating leads, forecasting sales and closing sales. In effectively managed organisations a good marketing and sales system is consistently supported by a well designed sales forecasting software system. Systems like these enable you to track and measure the actions and results in the sales and marketing processes. Results arederived from reports produced by the system which can then be used to compare what was planned with what actually happened. To sum up what gets measured gets improved or discontinued. This is the critical formula for success.
Lack a system to get sales from their captive customer base
There is a well known phrase that 80 percent of your sales should come from 20% of your customers. Your task is to achieve or surpass this figure. Customers who have already purchased from you are simpler and more cost effective to sell to than prospects that have not. A combination of effective web based crm software and sales forecasting software will give you the information of recent activity and allow you to search for opportunities in your existing customer lists.
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