Sales Forecasting Tutorial

Sales Forecasting is the process of using the company’s sales records of the past years to predict the short-term or long-term performance in the future. This is one of the pillars of proper financial planning. As with any prediction-related process, risk and uncertainty are unavoidable in Sales Forecasting too. Hence, it’s considered good practice for forecasting teams to mention the degree of uncertainties in their forecast.

A Sales Territory is the customer demographic or the geographical area assigned for sales activity to either a salesperson or a sales team. In these cases, a sales manager generally assigns the territory among members of the sales team. Often retailers, franchisees and distributors operate under specific territories.

In this tutorial, we will discuss in detail about how sales forecasting and territory planning helps in the growth of a company.

Audience

This tutorial is designed for people who have entered a sales-based company and are expected to work in the job profiles of salespersons. Understanding Sales Territory and Forecasting will help them set a realistic target and understand the scope of their operations.

Prerequisites

Before proceeding with this tutorial, you are expected to understand about sales records and how they are used in the financial planning of a company. It will be an added benefit, if you also know the basics of organizational structure and working model of your company.