My little plug here is that in order to truly enjoy as well as excel in sales today, you really need to take care of your health. Being stressed and overwhelmed will not make forecasting any easier; being focused and productive ensures not only will you forecast accurately… you’ll also enjoy achieving it:)

We have been conditioned to believe that in sales there is no such thing as the holy grail or a silver bullet.

I will tell you there is, it is called timing – getting in front of the right person at EXACTLY the right time.

When you have timing the sale almost happens by itself - No challenges getting to the customer, understanding their dissatisfaction, presenting a solution, or closing the sale.

Every day decision makers experience a Trigger Event that turn them, from someone who never would of bought from you yesterday, into someone who is highly likely to buy from you today.

Research shows that the average sales person is five times more likely to make a sale when they get to these recently motivated buyers before the competition.

Once you get there the 22 steps matter but if you have the 22 steps and don’t have timing… well we all know the results, or should I say lack of results, when that happens.

Tell Brad to keep his hands off my line. Brilliant is my thing and not only is your post just that, but it is going in my Brilliant post this week. Good job and try and not expose that hobby horse too often. We might all have to run for cover.

KG

Good comments… thank you.

The only people who should be forecasting are the sales reps… and they need to be accountable… but most management seem to take the monkey… to make sure the correct numbers flow up.

However, look at the private pipelines… the ones in Excel… and you will get a much more realistic view of the pipeline… hence I’m in favour of personal pipelines, showing how the rep is going to make their number with forecast accuracy above 95%

What I am aware of is that ’self preservation’ is always going to be a factor in the business world. Even if management have the ability to know beforehand that they will only make 85% of quota, the likelihood is that the same excuses are going to be made to the board about ‘positive future’ and a ‘great start on next quarter’. Excusing failure seems to be a very strong human character trait, though little is done about learning from it.

Until you have a management structure from top down, that accepts that failure is a part of the learning and improving process then there will always be a climate of fear which leads to number fudging.

I agree with you, there is a disconnection between management and the sales force. The further up the management chain you go, the larger the disconnection. However, accurate forecasting is an absolute must. It means you are working on the right deals at the right time… not wasting your time on a deal that will not close in the period.

Pipeline management is about putting a plan in place to show how you are going to make your number. To do your job you need to do 100% of your number. To make some money you need to do more than 100%… it’s what commission plans are for… to entice you to overachieve. If you are going to overachieve then you still need to forecast that you will overachieve… you can’t have religion in sales… management praying that the number will be made.

The reason for the disconnection between sales management and the sales reps is that sales management can not report bad news. Having just been given their number, they can’t report a miss… they can’t go to the board and say we are going to miss our number and there is nothing that can be done. What they can say is…

“It’s really tough out there… sales are down… we can see 80% of the number for sure… but we have a number of deals that we are working on that with a fair wind should tip us over the 100%”

There we go, told them its tough, but we should make it. However, at the end of the period when they have hit 85% of their number and not the 100%…

“I told you it was tough…I told you were down… and I said we needed a fair wind to close those deals… didn’t get it, they slipped to next quarter… we didn’t close them this quarter, but what a great start we have to the new quarter!”

Why is this scenario played out across sales anywhere in the world… because it’s easier to ask for forgiveness then permission!

I also agree with you that sales management focus on numbers rather than helping close opportunities. The reason they do this is because they have factored pipelines. Factored pipelines don’t tell which deals are closing… management then have to do a lot of manipulation of numbers to get to a forecast… they take on the monkey of forecasting. The monkey should stay with the sales rep. The rep should only do binary forecasting… they will then have a list of deals for closing. Sales management then help them close… simple.

What’s your thinking on the importance of accurate forecasting vs the use of pripeline management to actually drive forward sales.

It’s been my observation that some companies - particularly public companies in search of that other holy grail “shareholder value” - spend most of their effort in pipeline management trying to get accurate forecasts rather than trying to maximise sales. In other words they focus on the numbers rather than focusin on the underlying sales opportunities. Their time is spent grilling the sales team to make sure the “numbers stack up” rather than trying to help the sales team improve their chances at each opportunity.

Ian