Pipeline Accelerator Insight #109: New Product Forecasts Are Never Perfect and That’s Okay
New product forecasts are an essential part of the new product innovation process.
A good forecast is necessary to decide if the investment in a new product is a good idea.
But it’s far from an exact science.
Instead, forecasts are based on assumptions like:
- Target market size and percentage of early adopters
- Percentage of the potential customers will become actual customers
- How fast potential customers can and will adopt the new product
- Sales ramp up for other similar products in this marketplace
- How fast the market has adopted changes of a similar scale in the past
- Competitive response
And because you have to work from assumptions, some forecasts will miss high. Others will miss low.
But remember that perfection is the enemy of done.
So do what you can to predict your new product’s future while realizing that any individual forecast is likely to miss its mark.
On average, that will be “good enough” as long as you ensure that:
- The new product idea is rooted in unmet market needs
- Solving the problem creates enough business value that the customer gets a fast payback on their investment in adoption/switching costs
- That you can easily communicate the benefit
- There are no sources of resistance to change that can’t be reasonably overcome
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