The purpose of the study is to develop a methodological approach to the formation and adjustment of the production program for small and medium-sized enterprises of the machine-building industry. The choice of the object of study is explained by the development of medium and small-sized businesses, the specifics of the market and clients, the limitations to the use of the existing methodological tools, and by the new opportunities of digital technologies. The authors propose to identify prospective clients based on the introduced indicator of customer potential coefficient. At the first stage, the potential coefficient is calculated based on the statistics of the number of orders and is used to determine the growth of the number of sales on the client in subsequent periods. At the second stage, the regressional dependence between the calculated coefficient and the open data of external reporting on the client is observed. This makes it possible to calculate the coefficient for any new client. The entered indicator is used in the objective function of the optimization model of the production program. The article presents an algorithm of calculations and illustrations of the application of the method for a machine-building enterprise of small and medium-sized business. The results of testing have shown the reliability of the proposed approach.