Sales Forecasting & Great Works of Fiction

Why do so many sales forecasts bear a closer resemblance to great works of fiction than to reality? Why do “top opportunities” slip and slide from month to month and all too often disappear altogether?

The key to effective major opportunity and forecast management is getting inside the heads of your prospects to understand their thinking, gain credibility and mindshare. This must come before selling to them.

Optimism vs. Pragmatism
Forecasting accuracy will never be 100% as there will always be factors beyond control - spending freeze due to merger or acquisition, abrupt removal of a key contact, etc - but it certainly can be improved!

Salespeople tend to be naturally optimistic; otherwise they would never be able to do their job. This is a double-edged sword when it comes to determining where they really are with a specific opportunity.

The Most Common Mistake
Trying to drive sales opportunities from the top level forecast alone is a common but seriously flawed approach. The forecast should indeed provide a dashboard; however it can never be effective in isolation.

The foundation for reliable forecasting is effective opportunity planning combined with deep qualification. Tie this to a consultative approach, earning credibility and mindshare and you drive sales performance.

“Comfort Zone Selling”
A salespersons need to qualify an opportunity well is often over-ridden by a strong desire to “lay out their stall”. Presenting, proposing, demonstrating and selling are surely what they do best after all?

Jumping into premature pitching mode prevents any true connection with the prospect and limits the ability to get a genuine grip on the business drivers, politics and dynamics behind the clients real needs.

Why CRM Is Not The Answer
Whilst a good CRM system will certainly provide easy prospect and customer data storage, filtering, marketing information, management reporting, etc., it can only ever be as good as the data it contains.

Thus if the data is accurate and kept well up to date the CRM system can be expected to enhance, however if the data is inaccurate and out of date, the CRM system will only serve to exacerbate this problem.

Sales Methodologies
Any effective sales methodology must take a realistic up to date read on where we are with any given opportunity, highlighting vulnerabilities and exposures that need to be addressed in order to secure our position.

The plan is only as good as the intelligence gained through solid qualification and a consultative business relationship. A good sales approach challenges a salesperson ensuring key bases remain covered.

Prospect Engagement
Most salespeople engage with their prospects and customers with their own objectives (targets, pressure from boss, commission payments, etc) foremost in their minds and this creates a barrier.

In order to fully engage with a prospect or customer, it is necessary to acquire a solid grasp of what is foremost in their minds. This is most likely to be the immediate business issues or challenges they face.

And The Bottom Line?
The reality is that intelligent prospects and customers do not want to be sold to; they want “contributor providers” that will bring them solutions to the business pain they are suffering (“the pain behind the project spend”).

What they all too often get is a bunch of eager salespeople trying to push their wares, rather than taking the time to truly understand their clients’ needs. Fix this expectation gap and you fix the issue of forecast accuracy.

For further information and other free articles see: Sales Coaching and Sales Management Coaching.

Harry Hayden Perform Coaching

Date: 03/10/2008
Category: BUSINESS EDITORIAL