Straight-lining last year’s total sets targets that miss — because a launch spike isn’t a new baseline. So I take an account apart: what’s stable, what’s launch-driven, what changed in packaging — and project each on its own behavior. It’s how I was trained to read people: stable traits, temporary states, situational resets.
The book that returns every year — repeat orders, steady products. This is the floor you can safely forecast forward.
Big and temporary. A launch can make an account its biggest this year and rotate out the next — so you never bank it as the new baseline.
A step-change when terms or pack sizes move — a one-time reset of the run-rate, not a growth trend to extrapolate.
Before operations, I studied psychology — including how people’s living arrangements shaped their well-being through the pandemic. The training transfers, because a revenue line is people deciding things, repeatedly. Every account is three behaviors wearing one number:
The repeat book is a habit loop — orders that return because the routine and the relationship hold. Like a trait, it’s the only part of the account you may forecast forward.
A launch year is novelty and pipeline-fill — a state, not a disposition. States fade on their own schedule, and banking one as the new normal is exactly how targets break.
New pack sizes or terms change the situation, not the motivation. The level steps once and holds — carry the step forward, never extrapolate it into a slope.
An operator who can own a revenue model — segment accounts by behavior, set targets that hold, and show where next year’s growth actually comes from.