Businesses that don’t forecast sales inevitably fail
small business sales forecasting software
Fewer than 50% of businesses survive beyond five years. Visit government census or Depart of Industry web sites and if you look hard enough you will see irrefutable evidence
The analysts “broad brush” reason for death is the unfortunate ones basically ran out of cash. This explanation is of no value and so I decided to look for individuals directly and indirectly involved in failed businesses to see if I could determine the details, establish any common reasons for failure and present them on the net in the hope that my findings would help others avoid a similar fate. I uncovered eight common reasons for business death. Here are three of them:
No Vision, mission or strategy
“If you don’t know where you are headed then how are you going to get there?” You have to have a clear vision of what you want to achieve and how things will be for your business if you achieve it. To achieve anything you it is essential to have a strategy. Strategy can be likened to a route map it tells you how to get to your destination. It’s a structured series of actions. Strategy is only effective if it is translated into a business plan which can be used as a benchmark for business performance. A key instrument for tracking and measuring business perfomance is the sales forecast.
Lack of a system for marketing or sales
Marketing is about identifying markets and testing strategies to position your offering in the minds of prospects and pulling 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 ways you employ to reach prospects. Sales is the process of getting leads, forecasting sales and closing business. In effectively managed organisations a decent marketing and sales system is often underpinned by a effective sales forecasting software system. The tools in these systems help you to track and measure what is happening in the sales and marketing processes. Results arederived from reports generated 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 essential formula for success.
Lack a system to monetise their existing customer list
There is a well known saying that eighty percent of your sales should come from twenty percent of your customers. Your focus is to achieve or surpass this number. Customers that have previously made purchases from you are easier and more cost effective to reach than prospects that haven’t. A combination of decent web based crm software and sales forecasting software should give you the information of recent activity and allow you to search for opportunities in your existing customer base.
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