Forecasting – There Has to Be a Better Way

By Michael Green, Chairman, Landslide Technologies Inc.

Sales Managers as well as Sales Representatives are very busy people. As much as the Sales Manager would just love to know every intimate detail of every account in his or her territory, the reality is, he or she cares about and is responsible for properly managing his or her territory and personnel, but most important-closing business! What does a Sales Manager really care about? Simply said, answers to the following: How Much is the deal worth?  When will it close? What do we have to do next to get it closed?

Sales software solutions today are great at answering the first question. However, they are particularly ineffective at answering the ‘when’ and ‘what next’ questions.

Let’s examine one of the most important things that salespeople, sales managers and corporate executives have to report: Forecasting upcoming business. Talk about things that people hate to do! In most companies, forecasting is an art, not a science.  On a regular basis, salespeople are required to basically look into a crystal ball and “predict the future”. Most of the time, this is nothing more than a guess as to how large the deal is, and when an order or contract will be complete or close. Best case, it is simply the salesperson’s opinion! The next step is for the salesperson’s manager to weigh in with his or her opinion based mostly on the experience he or she has with that individual salesperson. In the sales world we call this “handicapping”. Some salespeople are what we call “sandbaggers” and will forecast very conservatively and thus prefer to become ‘heroes rather than goats’ when they run in at the last minute with the quarter-saving order. On the other hand, there are salespeople who forecast everything with high value and a high probability (in order to keep their manager off their back) but rarely come through with what they promised.

There is something fundamentally wrong with this process, because the entire company is relying on this information, probably THE most important information, and it is the basis for everything. And sadly, it is solely based on the opinion (nothing more) of the sales organization. Human Resources and Support Services needs to determine how many people will be needed to manage, build and support the company’s product or service. The Manufacturing organization naturally needs to know how many components to buy or services to acquire. And yes, these critical decisions once again are determined by the sales forecast.

Since Landslide was designed by salespeople for salespeople, we understand and completely respect the need for forecasting. But we believe it should be much more determined by what was really accomplished by the salesperson, based on a “proven path” that historically has worked successfully in the company. Landslide keeps track of activities and tasks as they are accomplished by the salesperson and requires little or no additional data entry. The software ‘generates’ the forecasts based upon where a salesperson is in the sales cycle rather than their opinions. We do understand that from time-to-time, there is a bit of “art” that creeps into the desired scientific sales process, which is why we provide intelligent ways to tweak/modify/override the forecast based on knowledge acquired “outside” the pre-determined methodology. If you are a career salesperson like me, you will appreciate this new approach to forecasting.

Receive a free copy of CustomerCentric Selling!

Register and view a 20 minute live demo of Landslide, a sales workstyle technology that helps you implement the principles of “CustomerCentric Selling” to build stronger sales team.

Sign up today!

Offer expires Feb 28th, 2007

Published by Bizlogx, LLC.
Copyright © 2007