--- title: "How to Set Annual Goals When There Is No Data?" description: "A reminder: Click the up arrow to follow \"FMCG Distributor Professional Consulting\" for more marketing and distributor internal management content. Often, sales plans that seemed certain turn out to be unrealistic or presumptuous upon evaluation. Indeed, with the changing market environment, setting sales targets has become increasingly difficult: setting them too high can demoralize the team and misallocate resources, while setting them too low can miss market opportunities and leave you regretting that you could have done better." author: "钟山君子" publisher: "New Distribution" email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com" telephone: "+8615854817671" published: "2014-12-09" language: "en" canonical: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/how-to-set-annual-goals-when-there-is-no-data-cb63f68c/" markdown: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/how-to-set-annual-goals-when-there-is-no-data-cb63f68c.md" original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/77XPkWzPrDd6lpmsCcIYbw" translation: "https://xinjignxiao.com/zh/articles/%E6%97%A0%E6%95%B0%E6%8D%AE%E7%9A%84%E6%97%B6%E5%80%99%E5%A6%82%E4%BD%95%E5%88%B6%E5%AE%9A%E5%B9%B4%E5%BA%A6%E7%9B%AE%E6%A0%87-cb63f68c.md" attribution: "New Distribution — https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/how-to-set-annual-goals-when-there-is-no-data-cb63f68c/" usage_policy: "https://xinjignxiao.com/ai-policy.txt" --- # How to Set Annual Goals When There Is No Data? > A reminder: Click the up arrow to follow "FMCG Distributor Professional Consulting" for more marketing and distributor internal management content. Often, sales plans that seemed certain turn out to be unrealistic or presumptuous upon evaluation. Indeed, with the changing market environment, setting sales targets has become increasingly difficult: setting them too high can demoralize the team and misallocate resources, while setting them too low can miss market opportunities and leave you regretting that you could have done better. A reminder: **Click the up arrow to follow "FMCG Distributor Professional Consulting" for more marketing and distributor internal management content.** Often, sales plans that seemed certain turn out to be unrealistic or presumptuous upon evaluation. Indeed, with the changing market environment, we find that setting sales targets has become increasingly difficult: setting them too high can demoralize the team and misallocate resources due to inaccurate positioning; setting them too low can miss market opportunities, and as you watch all sales units "turn red," you lament that you could have done better. How to set a good sales target has always been a crucial part of channel sales work. First, understand Fayol's five elements of goal setting, which are the premise and foundation for setting sales targets. Fayol's five elements are the famous "SMART" principle: S (Specific), M (Measurable), A (Agreed), R (Realistic), and T (Timed). All sales targets should adhere to these five elements as much as possible. Second, sales targets must be based on different market conditions to form differentiated target strategies. We can use two pairs of opposing characteristics—large gaps vs. intense competition, and short-term profit vs. long-term occupancy—to form four quadrants to decide our target strategy. When the market has large gaps and the strategic positioning is to capture short-term profit, a blitz tactic is suitable. At this stage, there are many market gaps, requiring the sales force to develop customers as quickly and as many as possible to quickly realize short-term profit. The assessment characteristics for the sales team at this stage are: low base salary, high commission, few comprehensive rewards, and a focus on results. When the market has large gaps and the strategic positioning is long-term occupancy, a positional tactic is suitable. Since the company is more future-oriented and aims for market reputation, it is not eager to rapidly increase sales volume but rather emphasizes standardized management of the sales process. The assessment characteristics at this stage are: moderate base salary, low commission, high comprehensive rewards, and a focus on process. When the market is intensely competitive and the strategic positioning is long-term occupancy, a siege tactic is suitable. At this stage, market competition is fierce, and the assessment characteristics are: high base salary, moderate commission, moderate comprehensive rewards, and a balance between process and results. When the market is intensely competitive and the strategic positioning is to capture short-term profit, a guerrilla tactic is suitable. At this stage, market competition is very intense, and companies pursue short-term profit by targeting marginal markets, taking one order at a time, such as health products. The assessment characteristics are: moderate base salary, high commission, few comprehensive rewards, and a focus on results. Third, when setting sales targets, it is necessary to reference basic data such as historical growth, industry growth, regional size, customer capability, individual capability, sales cost, and production scale, striving for accuracy and objectivity. Specific methods include the golden section method and the Delphi method. Market forecasting method: This involves ranking based on the company's sales data and market share in various regions to infer the level of sales targets that should be achieved in each region next year. This approach also reflects the limited nature of resources, requiring comprehensive consideration and reasonable allocation. Historical sales data forecasting method: This involves using the company's sales data trends and patterns over the past 3-4 years to determine whether the company's products are in a high-growth period, stable growth period, or decline period. A common method is data smoothing. Industry sales data forecasting method: This involves using industry sales data trends and patterns over the past 3 years to determine the company's sales target growth rate. The growth rate must be higher than the industry average to have long-term survival value. Sales capability data forecasting method: This involves using the company's individual sales data trends over the past 3 years to find the average and above-average levels (golden section point) to set individual sales targets for the next year. PERT sales forecasting method: This involves using the high, medium, and low sales target data reported by grassroots sales personnel to infer a more realistic sales target for the next year. The calculation formula is: EV = (a + 4m + b) ÷ 6, where a is the pessimistic estimate, b is the optimistic estimate, and m is the most likely estimate. This technique, known as PERT (Program Evaluation and Review Technique), is useful for deriving estimates based on subjective opinions such as sales manager opinions or sales force votes. Delphi forecasting method without data: This involves using collective brainstorming techniques to repeatedly infer forecast data. Delphi is a technique for processing collective opinions, where a group of experts is individually asked for their personal feelings about future events. The forecast results and supporting arguments are summarized by someone outside the expert group and fed back to the experts with further questions. This process continues until the expert group reaches a consensus, usually after a few rounds. This method is effective for long-term forecasting. --- --- ## Copyright and AI use This article is sourced from New Distribution. Search, quotation, summarization, and model training are permitted, but every use must credit New Distribution and retain the canonical source URL. 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