Forecasting
& Opportunity Management
Your ability to forecast is the cornerstone
to success in sales. What better manner of driving
yourself can you have than to see the future before
it happens? A weak forecast is what motivates
most sales people and teams to drive harder. Is
it not amazing how sales teams tend to “slow
down” when the order books are full, but
when things look tight in the future they then
start to work harder.
My personal philosophy of sales teams is that
each sales team must have a visible three month
forecast These forecasts are shared with team
members and the whole teams performance, highs
and lows can be viewed, This is the only real
way I know of driving individuals and sales teams.
Rolling three months forecast can either make
you or break you.
Three months is about the time it takes for an
order to written, manufactured, processed and
paid for.
So creating three-month forecasts should be a
monthly task of the sales team.
Lower than normal forecast sales in three months
time needs to be combated now …not in three
months time.
In addition, you should be able to list your
opportunities by probability values and month
of close, and be able to put a “net worth
“ on you and your opportunities,
When I work with sales teams, I find that forecast
become very accurate after a three-month “bedding
in period”. We need to become realists and
spend 80% of our time on the opportunities that
will yield us 80% of our revenue. Rather than
the reverse situation of what normally happens
being spending 80% of our time on the clients
that yield us 20% of our revenue.
Forecast and Opportunity Management
- Put a forecasting system in place
- Train sales team members to predict sales
- Review forecasts each month and check accuracy
- Encourage a team of sales team members that
are always aware of opportunities and when they
are due to be secured
In Closing…
If you implement the above ideas you will be on
the path to sales success – these are tried
and proven methods of becoming more motivated
and more successful in sales.
Here at Synergy for Success we build “Invincible
and Highly Profitable Sales-Teams and we do this
with our interactive seminars, workshops and Selling
Strategies Coaching Systems.
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