Business Plan need help please!

Storymaker

Hi,
Can anyone help I need to estimate sales figures for a business plan but haven't a clue where to start. The product that I am selling will be a new product not yet available in Ireland in the form I hope to sell it in.

Thanks

RedXIV

Is it door to door sales? cold calling? retail? online?

These matter

Also, you're probably better off looking here

Storymaker

Thanks a million I didn't actually see that forum when I was looking earlier!

Admor Tony

I usually suggest looking at your potential market from a number of angles, rather than just one. That way you can more easily validate the sales numbers and be more certain they are realistic.
One way to do this is to:

1. Look at your market from the top down i.e. total number of potential customers e.g. what is the population in the area / city / country where you are trying to sell? What % of these might buy and how do you know this? What is the number of competing products sold currently (yours may be new but it is likely to have substitute products)?

2. Then do a bottom up. How many can you actually make in a week, sell in a week, deliver in a week or whatever?

3. Be realistic - too many people say they will sell say 12,000 in their first year and this is 1,000 per month - you will need to build up your sales in the early months and years.

4. Make sure you base your figures on facts rather than just quess work as you will be expected to have a clear written set of assumptions on how you arrived at your numbers. And don’t simply say the potential customer base is 100,000 and you will sell to an arbitrary 10% of these.

5. Sensitise your figures i.e. what would happen if your sales were half what you expected in Year 1, what if sales doubled? Both of these have a significant effect on profit but more importantly cash. Businesses fail due to lack of cash not lack of profit.

Finally, you may find it easier to consider and design your core 'Business Model' first, a process that focuses on identifying the key variables to make your business a ‘Commercial’ reality rather than a pipe dream. You can then use this to readily populate your Business Plan.

Tony

smcgiff

Probably more suited to the enterprise forum where this thread also is.