Читать книгу Excel Sales Forecasting For Dummies - Carlberg Conrad - Страница 2

You wouldn’t have pulled this book off the shelf if you didn’t need to forecast sales. And I’m sure that you’re not Nostradamus. Your office isn’t filled with the smell of incense and it’s not your job to predict the date that the world will come to an end.

But someone – perhaps you – wants you to forecast sales, and you find out how to do that here, using the best general-purpose analysis program around, Microsoft Excel.

About This Book

This book concentrates on using numbers to forecast sales. If you’re a salesperson, or a sales manager, or someone yet higher up the org chart, you’ve run into forecasts that are based not on numbers but on guesses, sales quotas, wishful thinking, and Scotch.

I get away from that kind of thing here. I use numbers instead. Fortunately, you don’t need to be a math major to use Excel for your forecasting. Excel has a passel of tools that will do it on your behalf. Some of them are even easy to use, as you’ll see.

That said, it’s not all about numbers. You still need to understand your products, your company, and your market before you can make a sensible sales forecast, and I have to trust you on that. I hope I can. I think I can. Otherwise, start with Part 1, which talks about the context for a forecast.

You can hop around the chapters in this book, as you can in all books that feature the guy with a pool ball rack for a head. There are three basic approaches to forecasting with numbers – moving averages, smoothing, and regression – and you really don’t have to know much about one to understand another. It helps to know all three, but you don’t really need to.

Foolish Assumptions

The phrase foolish assumptions is, of course, redundant. But here are the assumptions I’m making:

❯❯ I’m assuming that you know the basics of how to use Excel. Entering numbers into a worksheet, like numbers that show how much you sold in August 2015; entering formulas in worksheet cells; saving workbooks; using menus; that sort of thing.

If you haven’t ever used Excel before, don’t start here. Do buy this book, but also buy Excel 2013 For Dummies by Greg Harvey (published by Wiley), and dip into that one first.

❯❯ I’m assuming that you have access to information on your company’s sales history, and the more the better. The only way to forecast what’s about to happen is to know what’s happened earlier. Doesn’t really matter where that information is – it can be in a database, or in an Excel workbook, or even in a simple text file. As long as you can get your hands on it, you can make a forecast. And I talk about how you can get Excel’s “hands” on it.

❯❯ I’m assuming you don’t have a phobia about numbers. You don’t have to be some kind of egghead to make good forecasts. But you can’t be afraid of numbers, and I really doubt that you are. Except maybe your quarterly sales quota.

❯❯ Of course, I’m also assuming you have Excel on your computer. I’m not assuming you have the latest version. But the Excel user interface changed so drastically in 2007 that I have to assume your version uses the Ribbon rather than the original menu structure. Even so, very little of the information in this book has to do with the user interface. Mostly, it’s about setting up your sales history, letting yourself be guided by Excel’s Data Analysis add-in, and finally working with worksheet formulas, charts, and other tools to get where you’re headed on your own.

Icons Used in This Book

In the margins of this book, you find icons – little pictures that are designed to draw your attention to particular kinds of information. Here’s what the icons mean:

Anything marked with this icon will make things easier for you, save you time, get you home in time for dinner. You get some of what I’ve distilled from all my years browsing those blasted newsgroups.

Not a lot of warnings in this book, but there are a few. These tell you what to expect if you do something that Microsoft hasn’t sufficiently protected you against. And there are some of those.

A string around your finger. There are some things to keep in mind when you’re doing your forecasts, and it’s usually easier to remember them than to have to look them up over and over. I do want you to read this book over and over, as I do with murder mysteries, but you’ll get your work done faster if you remember this stuff.

Speaking of stuff, anything marked with this icon is stuff you can probably ignore – but if you’re having trouble getting to sleep you may want to read these. I don’t get into heavy-duty mathematical issues here, but you see some special things about how Excel prepares your forecasts. Sleep tight.

Beyond the Book

In addition to what you’re reading right now, this product also comes with a free access-anywhere Cheat Sheet that tells you about Excel data analysis add-in tools, how to use forecasting functions, what you get out of the Excel LINEST function, and what to do when setting up your baseline in Excel. To get this Cheat Sheet, simply go to www.dummies.com and search for “Excel Sales Forecasting For Dummies Cheat Sheet” in the Search box.

I’ve also provided files for each chapter so that you can try out what I’m talking about in the leisure of your own home. You can find these files at www.dummies.com/go/excelsalesforecasting.

Where to Go from Here

Are you looking for information about the basics of forecasting? Why it works? Why it’s not just a self-licking ice cream cone? Start at Chapter 1.

Do you want to know how to put your data together in a workbook? Head to Chapter 5 to find out more about baselines, and then check out the chapters on using tables in Excel.

If you’re already up on forecasting basics and tables, head for Chapter 8, where you’ll see how to use pivot tables to set up the baseline for your forecast.

And if you know all that stuff already, just go to Chapter 10 and start looking at how to manage your forecasts yourself, without relying on the various tools that take care of things for you. You’ll be glad you did.