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SOME SUGGESTIONS FOR MEANINGFUL AND RELIABLE SALES FORECAST


SOME SUGGESTIONS FOR MEANINGFUL AND RELIABLE SALES FORECAST

       In order to make sales forecast more meaningful and reliable the following suggestions may be useful in this regard:

(1) Selection of Appropriate Method: Wide variety of methods are available for sales forecasting. The marketing company or the forecaster must carefully select appropriate method, which is most suited to the requirements of its product and organisation. Every product and organisation has some specific peculiarities from the point of view of sales forecasting, which needs to be taken into consideration for accurate calculation.

(2) Availability of Required Data and Information: Number of data and information which are required for the purpose of sales forecasting must be made available to forecaster. These information includes company’s past sales, changes in demography, present national and global economic conditions, changes in competition, charges in government policies, changes in consumer profile and changes in market potential.

(3) Use of Combination Methods: As every methods of sales forecasting has its relative merits and demerits, the combination of more than one method may provide good results.

(4) Use of Separate Methods: More than one method separately used for sales forecasting for the purpose of cross checking. Different methods of sales forecasting are not competitive, rather they supplement to each other. To obtain good result one methods may be chosen from analytical/ statistical group and another from non-statistical group for the purpose of comparison.

(5) Follow-up Action: Generally, sales forecast is made for one year. After the expiry of the period of sales forecast, an evaluation should be made, to know that up to what extent the company could perform. In spite of ‘post-mortem’ type evaluation, it would be better to conduct periodical evaluation of sales performance, to take appropriate corrective actions at an appropriate time. In the case of variance between sales forecast and actual sales performance, the responsible reasons should be identified in order make next sales forecast more reliable.

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