The Art and Science of New Product Forecasting

Everyone likes success. We are attracted to successful people and successful companies. We enjoy hearing stories of real people successfully overcoming personal hurdles to achieve greatness— from the former drug addict turned successful entrepreneur to the single working mother who not only put herself through college but her children as well. So the Marketing’s behavior towards a new product’s forecast should not surprise us. They place their integrity and career aspirations at risk on a new product venture much like a gambler playing craps bets on the come line. We waste energy and risk negativity hiding in the back office poking holes in or laughing at Marketing’s forecasts. Our primary responsibility is to guide them towards a reasonable forecast still attractive to the company or to reveal challenges hurdling potential success. How do we do this? We put on our Crime Scene Investigator hat and start asking probing questions of witnesses 18 Copyright © 2013 Journal of Business Forecasting | All Rights Reserved | Winter 2012-2013 (the art part of our position), and then sift through the evidence (the science part). THE ART PART QUESTIONING THE MARKETER While many ...