What is the aim of this course?

During many consulting projects, you may be asked to forecast the sales of the firm or check sales forecast models done by the customer. Sales forecasting requires a specific approach to data and also a lot of creative, out of box thinking, to address the issue of insufficient data and the changing environment. In this course, I will teach you how to do fast and efficiently basic sales forecast models in Excel. We will create relatively simple sales forecasts. Nevertheless, they will significantly help your customer define strategy, and decide whether he should open a new factory, enter a new field, buy a business. We will NOT get into complicated models, forecasts as in most cases you will have neither time nor data to do them. It would also require a wider knowledge of mathematics, statistics, econometrics, and the usage of more advanced tools than Excel. The things you will learn in this course will be sufficient in 70% of the cases and can be done with the knowledge of basic Math. Such basic sales forecasts are especially important during Strategy projects, M&A projects, and business development projects. In such projects, you want to get fast rough sales forecasts using simple methods. A similar approach as we will show in this course can be used as the starting point for budgeting models.

In the course you will learn the following things:

1. The essential concepts in sales forecasting and the main tools that you may need.

2. How to forecast sales in Excel using simple methods fast and efficiently

3. What drivers of sales you should take into account for selected industries. We will look at different cases studies to see how you can move from drivers to a working model in Excel

This course is based on my 15 years of experience as a consultant in top consulting firms and as a Board Member responsible for strategy, performance improvement, and turn-arounds in the biggest firms from Retail, FMCG, SMG, B2B, and services sectors that I worked for. I have carried or supervised over 90 different performance improvement projects in different industries that generated in total 2 billion of additional EBITDA. On the basis of what you will find in this course, I have trained in person over 100 consultants, business analysts, and managers who now are Partners in PE and VC funds, Investment Directors and Business Analysts in PE and VC, Operational Directors, COO, CRO, CEO, Directors in Consulting Companies, Board Members, etc. On top of that my courses on Udemy were already taken by more than 124 000 students including people working in McKinsey, EY, Walmart, Booz Allen Hamilton, Adidas, Naspers, Alvarez & Marsal, PwC, Dell, Walgreens, Orange, and many others.

I teach through case studies, so you will have a lot of lectures showing examples of analyses, tools that we use. For every lecture, you will find attached (in additional resources) the Excels as well as additional presentations, materials shown in the lectures. Therefore, as a part of this course, you will also get a library of ready-made analyses that can, with certain modifications, be applied by you or your team in your work.

Why have I decided to create this course?

Most management consultants avoid the topic of sales forecasting due to insufficient knowledge of mathematics, probability, and statistics. To make advanced models you need those things. However, in most cases, a simple approach using Excel can produce pretty good results. For that, you don’t have to spend 5 years studying math.

Therefore, I have decided to create this course that will help students understand or refresh the main skills and tools that they need during the consulting projects to do basic sales forecasting. The course will give you the knowledge and insight into real-life case studies that will make your life during a consulting project much easier. Thanks to this course, you will know what and how to do during the consulting project, when you will be asked to forecast sales. You will see how to identify what drivers are important in specific businesses and how to use them to build simple models in Excel.

To sum it up, I believe that if you want to become a world-class Management Consultant or Business Analyst you have to have a pretty decent understanding of how to do essential sales forecasting. That is why, I highly recommend this course to Management Consultants and Business Analysts, especially those that did not finish, mathematics and econometrics. The course will help you become pretty good at doing simple sales forecasting models in Excel on the level of McKinsey, BCG, Bain, and other top consulting firms..

In what way will you benefit from this course?

The course is a practical, step-by-step guide loaded with tones of analyses, tricks, hints that will significantly improve the speed with which you understand, analyze the businesses. There is little theory – mainly examples, a lot of tips from my own experience as well as other notable examples worth mentioning. Our intention is that thanks to the course you will learn:

1. The essential concepts in sales forecasting and the main tools that you may need.

2. How to forecast sales in Excel using simple methods fast and efficiently

3. What drivers of sales you should take into account for selected industries

You can also ask me any question either through the discussion field or by messaging me directly.

How the course is organized?

The course is divided currently into 3 sections. Currently, you will find the following sections:

• Introduction. We begin with a little intro to the course as well as some general info on how the course is organized

• Basics of Sales Forecasting. In sales forecasting, you can use different approaches. We will discuss them in this section and I will give you some tips on which one you should use in a specific situation.

• Useful Tools for Sales Forecasting. In sales forecasting, you can use different tools. We will discuss them in this section. We will talk about disaggregation, simulations, sensitivity analysis, and random variables. We will, later on, need those concepts to solve case studies

• Case Studies in Sales Forecasting. Finally, in the 4th section, we will move to case studies devoted to specific industries. We will look at 6 case studies and I will show you how to move from general drivers for the business to model in Excel that you can use

You will be able also to download many additional resources

1. Useful frameworks and techniques

2. Analyses shown in the course

3. Additional resources

4. Links to additional presentations, articles, and movies

5. Links to books worth reading

At the end of my course, students will be able to…

• Identify main drivers for a specific business

• Translate the drivers into basic sales forecast models

• Create the sales forecast models in Excel

• Create simple simulations & sensitivity analysis

Who should take this course? Who should not?

• Management Consultants and Business Analysts

• Financial Controllers

• Investment Analysts

• Startup Founders

• Project Managers

• Managers responsible for Acquisitions and Mergers

What will students need to know or do before starting this course?

• Basic or intermediate Excel

• Basic knowledge of economics

• Basic or intermediate knowledge of finance & accounting