Sales forecast play a very important role in any business. Not even for the business, but it is also needed when you want to get a loan from any bank or from any investor. Sales are the most vital component of any type of business but they are more important for the business which is related to the products.
In the process of selling, different companies sell their manufactured goods to their customers and get the profit in return. The profit earned completely depends on the sales of the company. In order to enhance sales, a company is required to have increased revenue.
There are different methods and techniques which are applied by the businesses these days to boost their sales and get maximum revenue.
The use of detailed sales forecast template is also one of those methods. The contents of the template enable the person to plan, implement, assess and to control the sales program of the company when a company gets to know about future sales in advance.
The forecast can be of different types i.e., monthly or yearly. The multiple products and services can be compared and analyzed by entering the number of units sold in a month, the price of one unit and the cost of goods and services.
The template is available free of cost. You can easily customize it according to your needs and requirements. The contents of the template depending on the type of forecast you want to make for the sales of your business. Important sections of this worksheets are described below.
Forecast Input:
This is sheet # 1 of the template named forecast input. This sheet contains information regarding different sales opportunities with a weighted forecast. It includes different information such as
- Opportunity: It may contain business or organization name which is involved in the business.
- Sales region: It is good to analyze the sales region wise and this information is very vital to make future plans.
- Sales category: It includes consulting, products, training, mixture, professional services, and support, etc.
- Forecast amount: The amount that can be forecasted about a particular sale.
- Sales phase: It includes formal approval, opportunity, identified a need or budget validated, etc.
- The probability of sale: The percentage number that shows numeric presentation of sales probability.
- Forecast close: If the sales forecasting is being done for monthly basis, enter a month’s name.
Enter all the relevant information and the sheet will calculate for you with a total of forecasted amount along with weighted forecast. See the screenshot below to understand in detail.
Forecast Totals:
This is sheet # 2 of the template named forecast totals. This sheet holds information for sales forecasts totals for each month in a year. This sheet is editable but it is strongly advised not to alter any cell as it contains formulas to perform different functions. This sheet is more like output for the forecasted sale relevant to each month.
Forecast Graph:
This is sheet # 3 of the template named forecast graph. It contains graph which represents a relationship between monthly weighted forecast Vs forecast revenue.
