How to Properly and Regularly Forecast to Grow Your Business and Avoid Significant Pitfalls

(Co-Authored by Aaron Schulman & Tim Scholten)

How does forecasting work and how do top performaing entrepreneuers and companies use it to stay on top?

How can it be done accurately and predictably?

How can you be sure that your business is going to stay ahead of the future changes in your market, your business and with your competition?

One thing is for sure, if you do not properly learn to lay the foundation of your business boundaries by properly framing your business, you will not be able to forecast.

Forecasting has to have specific boundaries as well, otherwise you will be shooting blindly at random targets.

In order to properly forecast and stay ahead of your market and competition, you first must learn how to frame and diagnose your business, as well as how to use these processes to adjust as needed.

In the Visible Progress Market Beating Strategy Workshop (™) you will learn how to properly frame and diagnose your specific business so that forecasting will be crystal clear.

Being crystal clear about your foundation is what will keep you ahead of the market and your competition.

For example … we work closely with Mortgage Originators.

Several years ago, after some market research, I started recommending to my clients that they implement an automation tool called getbonzo.com.

The reason is that this automation tool is designed to start the conversation with a prospect.

It uses ringless voicemail, text and email combined to create what feels like personal outreach but fully automates it.

It allows Mortgage Originators to easily 10 X their prospect and client communications, schedule when and how they will be contacted, and ensure 100% that they will be contacted versus leaving this for when I get around to it…which almost never happens!

This approach allows the originator to forecast the number of prospect and client communications that they will have in any category they want to create within Bonzo.

Based on the Mortgage Originators follow up of these leads, prospects and clients, they can establish a forecast of future business based on the number of leads, prospects and clients in their pipeline.

We were able to demonstrate to our clients that for around $200.00 per month they would be able to save as much as 50% of their time each month that they spent proactively making phone calls.

And if they were not making these calls at all, any results would be 100% additive to their business.

This business case showed our mortgage originators that their least enjoyable task, the one they continue to put off, could be automated…
…thereby improving their new business results and allowing the originator to focus on actual client conversations that result in business the majority of the time, increasing their results by 10 X over time with predictable results.

In another example, where forecasting was critical for a larger company, I worked with a hospital client on their strategic planning process.

We had the team spend time reviewing the emerging trends in medicine and help an in-depth conversation with the management team on how they believed those trends would affect their patient activity going forward.

This was a strategic step for them that helped them look over the horizon for the first time as part of their planning. They had never done this kind of forecasting before in their history!

This look helped them redefine their future investments in people, technology, and space.

Seeing and coming together as a management team on what their future entailed helped them build a better plan for the future.

Hiring the right people in anticipation of their future needs as well as creating the space needed for new services they agreed were coming quickly, helped them be one of the first hospitals to meet these emerging needs much sooner than all their peers and competitors.

It was like they had a crystal ball and could see into the future from the perspective of their competitors.

That is exactly what we are talking about with forecasting how work will be done in our future.

Think about when Covid 19 hit the world.

There are many companies that had begun embracing a “work from home” culture.

They were 90% of the way to where they could operate 100% remotely when Covid hit this country.

At the same time, other companies didn’t have their remote access set up or scaled for 100% of their workforce.

Their management teams didn’t feel that either their culture was pulling them this way or that there would be a pandemic that could force the issue. So only critical people had remote access.

Companies that were prepared didn’t miss a single step.

Others that weren’t, floundered until they could get their plan implemented while the entire world was trying to get the same technologies implemented at the same time..

So where is “forecasting” in your normal strategy and planning process?

On a scale of 1-10, 10 being the best, how would you rate your company or team at “forecasting”?

From what we have seen, 90 to 95% of business could use significant improvement in their ability to implement forecasting but they don’t know where to start.

Will 2022 be a recap of 2021 or worse for your company?

Or will you implement forecasting in a way that adds significant growth to your bottom line?

If you are not 100% certain, schedule a strategy call with us and we will help you get crystal clear on how you can implement a forecasting process that is perfect for your business.

During this process, we will help you accurately forecast the future of your market, business, competition, and build a plan that will keep your business ahead of market changes and ahead of your competition.

This will help you avoid missing critical trends and opportunities that may derail your business.

How can you tell when your business needs to be sharper with forecasting…

If you are not clear on all the ways that forecasting can impact your business…

Here are some major signs & symptoms that your business / team needs to master “Forecasting“

-You are caught off guard by a new industry trend
-You consistently overproduce or underproduce what is needed in your market.
-You frequently have to run sales to move excess inventory to get the cash to keep your business running
-You have products or services that customers no longer buy – outdated
-You don’t seem to have the right people in the right areas most of the time
-You have constant labor shortages
-You are caught unprepared by new regulations

After we help you master the skill of “Forecasting” (offered in our Marketing Beating Strategy Workshop), your business will exhibit these characteristics of a thriving business:

-You know where the industry and your market area is headed
-You understand how the economy is impacting your business
-You know where your future grow will come from
-You know what areas of your business are in growth mode and which are declining
-You know when you should exit or sell certain products or lines of business
-You know what staffing you will need to support future business and hire in time
-You know how regulation will affect your business

So what will 2022 hold for you and your business?

Schedule a 30 minute, no-pressure, non-salesy strategy session with us and we’ll help you get started down the right path to a much better 2022 for you and your business.