SME survey

What are your predictions for sales over the next 12 months?

Small to medium-sized enterprises/ businesses (SMEs/SMBs) contribute significantly to UK plc. In 2019, there were 5.82 million small businesses in the UK1. These accounted for 60% of the employment and around half of the turnover in the UK private sector2. On that basis, then the future economy heavily rests on the success of SMEs in the marketplace. The Bank Of England is forecasting a 7.25% growth in 2021 (source: Financial Times) which is encouraging given the COVID-19 pandemic and the completion of Brexit.

Therefore, this survey looks at how some of those small businesses (61 responses) are expecting to perform in terms of sales over the next year.

And there is good news (as can be seen in figure 1), with the vast majority of those surveyed (85.2%) predicting sales growth going forward. Only 5% were expecting no growth or a decline in sales. 9.8% were uncertain which is understandable as they may not undertake sales forecasting and their industry sector maybe unpredictable; particularly if impacted directly by the pandemic.

Delving a little deeper to find out what the main contributors would be to this growth, figure 2 shows the top 5 reasons that businesses were expecting an increase in revenue. It is good to see, that despite the challenges a lot of business owners have experienced during the pandemic, they are still looking at investing in marketing and are optimistic about the market conditions they are facing.

Overall, this is a very positive picture giving the confidence that SMEs will bounce back and impact the growth of the economy this year and for years to come.

Figure 1

Figure 2

Sources

1.Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy

2.Federation Of Small Businesses

Get involved

To take part in the next survey – it looks at what outsourced services you use (if any) as a business owner – visit here: https://forms.gle/8hDdByTqFvQMTqFK7. The results will be shared in the next edition of this magazine.