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Realistic Number of Customers

It can be fairly easy to estimate the potential amount of customers. But how many will buy your product.

How many will actually want to take money out of their purse and pay you for your product or service? This is difficult to estimate.

Ways to estimate

To come up with a qualified guess you could interview 10 potential customers. Ask them whether they want to buy your product instead of the one they are using at the moment. Hopefully, 50% will say yes.

Other issues that could determine a realistic number:

• Your location such as close to the railway station is very good, so 100 customers per day will be realistic
• You can sell the same product 40% cheaper because of improved effectiveness - this attracts customers
• You have found a ‘gap’ in the market so there are no competitors.
• Heavy marketing and PR for the first four weeks should open the market up
• Maybe you are so lucky that the first customer is your old workplace, who has already bought 500 hours of work from you.

Don´t make unrealistic estimations in your business plan. Everybody can see through an unrealistic number, or at least investors, staff from the bank and other businessmen can.

A Sports Bar and Cafe

A Sports Bar and Cafe could write this in their business plan: Because of its new value, our powerful marketing campaign and our close relationship with the local sports club, we expect full house most of the week. By full house we mean:

• In the cafe we have room for 150 persons/chairs
• From Monday to Wednesday we expect 60% occupied chairs
• They will be occupied 2 times during the day
• Thursday to Sunday 80 % occupied chairs
• They will be occupied 3 times during the day
• Each customer will spend an average of $20.

Loosers makes excuses, winners makes progress.
- Brian Tracy, motivational speaker and author