Today’s Sales Forecast: Slightly Cloudy with a Chance of Revenue

Richard Lind, RVP, Commercial Sales, Salesforce

Modern selling professionals have every tool at their disposal to manage sales cycles, but sales organizations continue to struggle with variability in their forecasts — variability that can result in production issues, missed individual quotas, or can even affect a company’s stock price.

So how can you ensure that your forecasted blizzard doesn’t turn into flurries overnight? It comes down to a few key factors:

1. Inspection

Front-line sales managers need to have ongoing conversations around their 30/60/90-day pipeline with their team. At Salesforce, it is a standardized practice for every regional manager and vice president to conduct Monday morning pipeline meetings, in which all account executives (AE) have to publicly announce their forecasts.

It is the job of the front-line manager to ask the right questions about the sales cycles: has budget been approved, are we aligned to power and is this a top priority for the company, do we know exactly how salespeople are making decisions and procuring contracts, have we quantified and qualified the value of the solution, and is there a compelling event driving the timeline? If we have solid answers to these tough questions, the confidence in our forecast increases significantly.

2. Mutual Plan

The existence of an agreed-upon mutual plan is a necessary component of an accurate forecast. If the salesperson hasn’t identified all of the steps within a prospect’s evaluation process, along with the corresponding process owner and associated timelines, the probability of closing the deal as forecasted becomes very low. Not only do you need to understand this plan, but you need to gain firm agreement from the decision makers on each step of the cycle. This will drive predictability and reduce variability.

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