Your 5/12 or 41.37% completed with the year, do your numbers tell you if you are going to make your 2009 year-end budget numbers today? If you had a twelve month pacing model in place for your business, you would have an accurate reading about this question.
A pacing model can help your business unit gauge if it is on pace to meet the goals set forth and gives a quick “YES or NO” to that pacing question throughout your goals’ time frame.
A pacing model is different than a forecasting model, since a pacing model takes your historical numbers to date plus what is pre-sold/reserved and compares that number to where you want to be at the end of your goal, which in turn can inform you if you are on pace to meet those goals in the allocated amount of time, with no variables included in its calculation (seasonality, pricing variations, external demand and supply situations, etc.).
Think of a pacing model as a macro model that tells you yes or no to the success of finishing your goal in the time allocated. By having a pacing model in place, you can determine if your current sales activity is enough today, to generate the numbers needed to make your year-end goals, even if you are less than 50% completed to that year-end. It is not just good enough to produce your numbers TODAY; you must also look forward and make sure that today’s numbers will match your goals tomorrow. By knowing if you are “on pace” or not to your year-end goals, management can make decisions TODAY if the marketing and pricing strategies in place now will be adequate to meet those goals, thus implement changes if they are not.
Stopping and looking forward is the only way a good business person can guarantee that today’s efforts will lead to tomorrow’s goal achievement.
Do you have some sort of pacing model in place for your business unit? If not, you should, how else can you make sure you will be at the 100% to goal for year-end numbers, even though you still have 58.63% to go?
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