As a practical approach a company may schedule completion of the strategic long-term sales plan as one of the first in the steps overall planning process. For example, a company operating on calendar year a may complete a long-term sales plan, at least in tentative form by the end of July because this gives sufficient lead time for interim considerations essential to development of next year's comprehensive short-term profit plan during the latter part of the preceding calendar year. Long-term sales plans are usually developed as annual amounts. The long-term sales plan uses broad groupings of products (product lines) with separate consideration of major and new products and services. Long-term sales plans usually involve in depth analyses of future market potentials, which may be built up from a basic foundation such