Sales forecast for 2024: Participants at our Future Forum have a positive outlook

Rather subdued prospects for the development of industry in Germany? Not according to many of our clients. The results of a survey conducted by Dr. Schönheit + Partner among around 40 top executives from the manufacturing industry at the Industry of Future Forum revealed that a remarkable 75% of the entrepreneurs surveyed expect stable or growing sales for their companies in the current year. 29% even expected strong growth of more than 5%.

This sets the companies apart positively from the general assessment of German industry and various economic institutes. What do many of these companies have in common that enables them to grow successfully in the production location Germany even in economically difficult times? We see three things that the companies surveyed have in common:

• INNOVATION SPIRIT – The pursuit of continuous improvement runs through all areas of the company, from development to operational processes. As a result, many of the interviewed companies are world market leaders in their respective segments with highly innovative products.

• PROCESS FLEXIBILITY – A major competitive advantage is the ability to react quickly to changing market conditions, to align the company accordingly and to profit from this. Adaptive and resilient processes make this possible.

• LONG-TERM PLANNING – Strategic planning is geared towards the long term, not just the fulfillment of the next quarterly results. This is reflected, for example, in investments for long-term competitiveness. Managers who focus on long-term brand development and exchange ideas with other companies, for example at events such as “Industry of Future“, also play an important role.

The around 40 participants in our survey represent a total of 18 sectors and are responsible for a total turnover of around 22 billion euros and 110,000 employees.