Too many salespeople think of forecasting as something they HAVE to do, or SHOULD do – when in fact it is something you NEED to do for yourself! It will drive your income – if you use it as a sales tool.
In fact, there are two distinct #BeingYourBest parts to using your forecast!
The crazy thing is that both of them only tangentially involve what sales management expects from a salesperson. Yet both will make the exercise you do for your boss much easier.
Part 1
My friend Debbie Mrazek wrote The Field Guide to Sales with the first chapter being on, you guessed it, forecasting!
What is your sales goal?
When I ask salespeople that question, they say something like, “
Well Deb, I want to do $2 million dollars this year.”
I follow up with
“Would that be $2 million by selling $1 million to two customers
or to twenty customers who each buy $100,000?”
Clearly, that makes for two very different plans of attack
ONE accounting firm may be looking for steady income through the whole year. While another would like to put in an extraordinary level of effort during tax season for the bulk of their revenue.
Where I live there are bistros looking for the tourist crowd – expecting someone to come in once, at best daily for a week. Then others are catering to locals and they want to see repeat customers.
When I work with inside salespeople there are some hunting whales, working hard on that BIG deal to hit quota. Others enjoy and expect to do lots of smaller orders every day.
Each of these dissimilar sales forecasting philosophies can add up to the same overall revenue number over the course of a year.
How you answer Debbie’s forecasting questions will impact:
- Who is your best target prospect.
- What contacts you need to build relationships with.
- AND how you’ll sell.
Part 2
Once you understand your personal overall account and sales forecast strategy, take a look at what you’ve already identified on your business opportunity dartboard.
Your dartboard includes everything, regardless if it’s below your forecast criteria or already in the forecasted business you’ve reported to management.
- Know what deals are on the outer edge of the target – it’s a bigger space and easier to hit, consistency of closing and the right ones will move you toward goal.
- Plus what is in the bullseye; perhaps a more difficult to close deal that will put you over your quota.
- Also know how many darts you have left to throw.
- Along with where your competition has hit the target instead of you.
What you find dictates the sales activity you need to act on every day – week – month – quarter – year.
An inside sales course of action is very different if you:
- have 3x your goal in opportunities, but not much has been committed to you
- are forecasted over goal
- don’t have enough business in your pipeline to fuel sales
Make an appointment with yourself each week: look at what you know – what you don’t know – and then make a decision on what activity you’ll be using for your BURSTfocus® times every week.
Use forecasting as a sales success tool, it will help you in your quest of #BeingYourBest. It is not just a number “THEY” ask you for each week!
Here’s to being your best!
Lynn
ps: Still having trouble wrapping your arms around forecasting? Step 1 is to buy Debbie’s book AND READ chapter 1, don’t worry it’s really written like a field guide and will take you through action steps. If you’re still stuck, either one of us would love to work one-on-one with you!
Comments (0)