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t’s budget time again. While few people become sales managers to experience the sheer thrill of working the kinks out of a budget, there’s just no way to make the numbers work without first work- ing the budget. Although bean counting and number


crunching may not provide the adrenaline rush of a knockout presentation or the thrill of a huge sale, you can’t do business without knowing where the money is going and when it should be coming back.


So, if you want to take the guesswork out of selling, you have to start by predicting future events. Why set a national sales goal for the year? “So you can manage and control your sales,” suggests a consul- tant who specializes in sales force management around the world. Setting the annual sales budget forces everybody to confront some im- portant choices up front, before the actual selling gets underway: • Where are we going to boost sales this year? • What resources do we need to boost sales? • When will the money come in – early or late in the year? • Will some sales channels grow in importance? • How will we handle channel conflicts? Needing answers to these questions gives a powerful reason for examining sales budgets closely. That means breaking down both revenue and cost budgets into the smaller pieces managers actually control day by day throughout the year.


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