EstimateQuantityOfSales

How can we estimate the quantity of sales and implementation proficiency we require in our ecosystem to achieve our product sales targets? We know how about much product we want to sell. We also know that our clients require skilled people to implement any of these products successfully. Now we need to figure out how many skilled people we need to �create� within our ecosystem to support our clients' needs over the next year.

StuartScott 2004.06.11

Let me paraphrase in case I missed it. You know how much product you want to sell, but part of selling is some sort of implementation or consulting to make the product work at your clients. (Did I get this right?)

I assume each project is a little different, or you would have subsumed the implementation into the core product. Can you categorize the clients in some way (small, medium, large implementations come to mind)? Can you then determine a range of person-hours needed of which kinds of skills?

-- JohannaRothman 2004.06.14

You assume right. Actually, every project is a lot different. We can categorize by complexity factors, and to some degree by the type of problem being solved. (One product can be fairly simple to implement for one type of solution, and very complex to implement for its other primary application.)

There's a huge range in actual person-hours per project. It's hard to determine how much of the variation results from problem complexity, and how much from human factors such as level of experience or client politics.

So any demand model we build will be based on a host of simplifying assumptions, and will be very hard to validate. And yet without a model of total demand in our ecosystem, we have no rational way to figure out how much training capability we ought to invest in. So we tend to get "random acts of training" that aren't part of a cohesive approach.

The key to this approach will not be a model of proven accuracy, but rather a model that people agree is good enough help us agree on an estimate or forecast of "know-how demand."

StuartScott 2004.06.20

Updated: Sunday, June 20, 2004