Search Results
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Fix Your Mediocre Pipeline for Accurate Sales Forecasts awarded Bronze Medal for Top Sales & Marketing Blog Post
- December 23, 2015
- Posted by: Kurlan & Associates, Inc.
- Category: News
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Fix Your Mediocre Pipeline for Accurate Sales Forecasts
- January 26, 2015
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Most salespeople don’t pay too much attention to this. Even though we perform a pipeline analysis and restage the pipeline with every individual sales evaluation and comprehensive sales force evaluation we conduct, we typically discuss this exclusively at the executive level.
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Sales Pipeline and Forecasting
- January 8, 2015
- Posted by: Kurlan & Associates, Inc.
- Categories:
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Opportunity Blindness – What’s in Your Sales Pipeline?
- February 28, 2024
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Some observations:
The data represents the forecast and funnel for 7 sales teams.
The gaps (A & G) are backwards and should say 72% (A) and 41% (G).
The quarterly forecast (C) is 58% short of the quarterly target (D).
The current closable opportunities (B) are 77% short of the forecast (C) and 90% short of the quarterly target (D).
Add columns G and H and together, all of those columns represent pathetic, old news.The question that should be asked is, “What can we do about this?”
We should be able to answer that question by looking at column F but that’s not possible. Can you see why?
Outside of telling us that there isn’t enough in the funnel, the data in column F doesn’t answer the question that must always be asked: Is the pipeline viable?
We know the assigned value of the pipeline but we don’t know the answers to these additional ten important factors:
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Most Sales Processes, Funnels and Pipelines are How Old?
- September 29, 2021
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I was looking for an image of a sales funnel and couldn’t believe what I found! My search results can be found here. Can you believe all of those images of sales funnels? Look them over and see if you can recognize the problem with all of them.
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Sales Pipeline Data Shows That Most Late Stage Opportunities Just Aren’t
- July 11, 2018
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
If you happened to read the article about most salespeople being fired or arrested if they worked in accounting then this is the sequel – Arrested 2!
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Predict the Weather but Control the Sales Forecast and Revenue
- June 6, 2017
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
You may be familiar when the rant sounds like: “It’s almost the end of the quarter, we’re only at 65% of forecast, the pipeline is half empty, and nothing is closing. With the exception of 3 nice deals that came in during May, our salespeople have sucked.”
While the crappy weather and your crappy 2nd quarter revenue have crappy in common, there is one huge difference that can help you hit your sales forecast even when the weather forecast is for rain.
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A Guaranteed Fix for Inaccurate Sales Forecasts
- September 15, 2015
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Are your expectations completely unrealistic when you attempt to forecast sales for the month or quarter? For most companies, inaccurate forecasts are the norm and expectations for accuracy are insane. But that’s when companies rely on CRM applications with any of the following 10 challenges:
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An Ode to the Evolution of the Pipeline
- July 13, 2015
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Selling – the art and science of getting people who didn’t necessarily want what you have, to pay you a premium for it. Before you can sell anything, you must have some people to sell it to! Fill the pipeline today!
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Why was the Sales Forecast so Unreliable?
- January 8, 2015
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Yesterday, schools were canceled, non-essential state workers were told to stay home, and businesses were asked to release their employees early. We told our employees that they could leave at Noon. It was quite a powerful storm and we were going to get in the neighborhood of 8-12 inches, all during business hours. Based on history, that is when drivers are most likely to become stranded on the roads. As late as 6 AM, they stuck with their 8-12 inch forecast, with snow scheduled to begin within 2 hours and intensify as the day wore on, snowing as heavily as 2 inches per hour during mid-day.