What is Scenario planning role in sale trend?

ِBriefly, It is a kind of general thinking. I mean planning generally in all the scenarios you may use to analyse, predict and prepare for an outcome. It is actually a strong kind of planning and they may use it for military activities. 

  Scenario planning role in sale consists of management considering a range of plausible future outcomes ranging from a ‘small stretch of the imagination’ to the ‘outlandish’. The aim is to think through the implications for the company if certain scenarios came into effect. So for example what would happen if sales decline by% or if oil doubled in price in this year ? By thinking through a number of plausible scenarios, and designing strategies to deal with such eventualities, companies will be better prepared if indeed one of the scenarios does in fact occur

• identifying new ways to grow
• enhancing long-term strategic thinking
• improving strategic dialogues with clients and other stakeholders
• creating new business models and services, and testing them for strategic robustness
• making R&D and innovation truly creative – and more effective

Thanks for the invitation.

Sorry...Sales is not my skill or having any experience in it. Let me try to give my view or use my other experience to answer. 

I think Scenario planning is something which is planning for particular set of facts and conditions and apply the related plan set for respective scenarios coming across. My2 cents. Thanks.

Scenario planning is the brainstorming of ideas to come up with a set of forecasts used to understand and detemine whether the company's current strategy and product development plans are strong enough to venture through multiple scenarios. The scenarios may include the following steps:

1.identify critically uncertain issues

2. define potential outcomes

3. create self-conistent scenarios

4. write scripts

5. quantify market opportunities

6. review current status and impact of market changes on strategy and operations.

It's a strategic  planning method used to make different long term scenarios to deal with changing market schemes.it's mainly based on future forecasting and planning  based on multiple factors.there is3 types of forecastingShort-term : up to a year forecasting and planning.Mid-term : from a year to three years.Long-term : more than three years.The sales forecast is mainly based on how much the company believes it can achieve in sales for a choice period of time, therefore you can't disregard different factors such as and not limited to market share, market volatility, company weaknesses, suppliers, resources and competition.

Considering all the good answers given, it´s hard for me add more value for this discussion.

Scenario planning is a foresight methodology that he focus is making better decisions and add more references in your sales process to achieve the best/proposed results.

Scenarios don´t predict the future, but allow to see a range of possible solutions and strategies based on the acquired knowledge.

The scenario plan should/can consider:

a) the possible - what "might" happen (future knowledge)

b) Plausible - "could" happen (current knowledge)

c) Probable - "likely" to happen (current trends)

d) Preferable - "want" to happen (value judgements)

This process should identify the focal question (your sales goals), should identify your environment (internal and external), should select drivers of ranking (to measure the actions), build a matrix that wll give you clues what is "uncertain" and what is "probability to happen" and consider the strategic implications.

Full Agree With All Colleagues Answers

The sales plan is based on the forecast of sales which the company believes it can achieve. The sales forecast cannot be viewed in isolation; it represents a share of the total market which can realistically be attained and this, in turn, depends on the strengths and weaknesses of every competing supplier and the level of resources each commits in support of its own sales.