Sales projections made easy with these 3 worksheets
During the pandemic, attempts to make financial projections – much less a three-year plan – went straight out the window. Now that the economy has settled down, however, projections are a great way to understand your sales volume.
Are you on track to stay even in 2024 or grow? How much new business do you need?
Here is a projection worksheet with three tabs that will help you make a better plan for 2024.
Use all three tabs and make them your own based on your own products and market characteristics.
A. Annual projection by rep by customer
B. Roll-up of all rep projections
C. Monthly or quarterly sales planner
Let’s just go step by step:
A. Annual projection by seller
- First, Download the customer list and total sales by customer for 2023 by seller. You may want to include an estimate through year-end if there are several months left or if booking month by month. Upload the list by the seller into the spreadsheet.
Already, you will be able to create information that the accounting software may or may not have, such as average order per seller, how much of the revenue is in each seller’s top ten accounts, and how many accounts they are managing.
2. Give sellers their own spreadsheet and ask them to estimate what each customer will book in 2024.
The key element here is placing each number in a “100%, 80%, 50%, or 20% sure column.” Sellers cannot predict the future, but they are the frontline and know the customer best. The spreadsheet will automatically calculate a projection for the sales representative.
3. Add new business. Once you have calculated the average sale for each seller – based on what their customers buy every year – you can multiply by the number of new sales per month to check if new business goals are high, low, or reasonable.
Remember that an account manager with a large volume will sell last than a “hunter” who is carrying a very small list with higher expectations for prospective new business.
For example, if the average sales is $6000, and the new business goal is $100,000, a seller should be able to stay on track by turning in a couple of sales a month.
B. Roll up the projections into a summary
The second tab gives you a company-wide projection that has started from the ground up. If the goal is a 20% increase, does this match the whole dollars projected here?
Planning in 2023 for 2024 also leaves you time to think through sales compensation issues, such as a flat fee bonus on new contracts or a tiered commission for achieving greater than the plan.
C. Plan monthly or quarterly reviews in 2024 to update projections and performance.
On the third tab, you can give the reps a spreadsheet of everything rebooked for the upcoming month, show what was booked last year, and allow them to create a plan.
This should be done on the 20th of the month prior to the start, so sometimes quarterly is easier to manage.
It’s a great time to see if the seller is on track with their annual plan, talk about sales strategies in a more global way, and for them to see if they are on track to meet their own financial goals. Every team is different, so make this work for yours.
We’ve used this sheet by first adding all the prior year’s numbers and the bonuses at goal for exceeding these. The review is partly a strategy session but also keeps them thinking about their own plan.
