10 Steps to Crushing Your Sales Forecasts

One hundred years ago, most men and women wore hats and dressed up to go everywhere. Sixty years later, Dress for Success was founded and at the same time became somewhat of a thing where if you wanted to be successful, you needed to dress like you were successful.  That was followed by business casual Fridays and then always business casual. Finally, the tech industry ushered in the current movement for business dress, the “who cares?” dress code.  The pandemic changed everything so that “who cares?” temporarily became whatever you were wearing when you woke up this morning!

Times change but one constant is the requirement for monthly, quarterly and annual sales forecasts.  It used to be difficult to come up with that number but with the technology we have today, a single click in our CRM applications should show us the accurate number.  But there is always a lingering question that accompanies that click:  Is that really the accurate number?

Most sales leaders have to perform major tweaks to that number because the opportunities in the CRM aren’t up to date, the opportunities don’t contain all the information, and the probabilities and dates are likely over stated.  But despite playing with the data, the sales leaders’s attempt to settle on a single, more realistic number will usually be incorrect. In my experience, there are three distinct types of CEO reactions to this constant epidemic of missed forecasts:

1. The revenue is fine and the margins are high regardless as to whether the team does or doesn’t hit the forecast number and they simply don’t care.  They are in the minority but they are definitely out there.
2. Some CEOs have become so numb to this monthly ritual that the likelihood of an inaccurate forecast has been baked into their operation.  They expect it to be wrong.
3. Finally there is the third group. They become more and more pissed off with every blown forecast and don’t understand why it continues to occur or what to do about it.

Watch this 3 minute rant from me to hear what I believe is to blame.

I feel better now that I got that off my chest…

Here are 10 steps to put an end to missed forecasts:

1. CRM – Cut your losses and move to a salesperson-friendly CRM so that your salespeople will use it and keep it updated. If they see it as a tool to help them sell rather than a replacement for call reports you’ll have realtime data and isn’t that the primary executive function for CRM?  I recommend Membrain.
2. Sales Process – Have your trusted sales consultancy customize and optimize your sales process.
3. Tools – Have your trusted sales consultancy build a predictive scorecard and simple playbooks.
4. Integration – integrate the sales process, scorecard and playbook into your CRM.  It should all be working together inside your CRM.
5. Training – Train your salespeople on how THEY can get the most out of THEIR CRM application and share your expectations as to daily use.
6. Accountability – Hold salespeople accountable for keeping it updated daily. It’s a condition for continued employment, or for releasing their commissions, or for expense reimbursement but under no circumstances is it optional.
7. Evaluation – Ask your sales consultancy to have your sales team evaluated in all 21 Sales Core Competencies so that you can identify capabilities and gaps and weaknesses and get them fixed.
8. Training – Get comprehensive training for your sales managers on how to effectively conduct opportunity reviews and coach up your salespeople.  Isn’t that one of the primary sales management purposes for CRM?
9. Training – Have your sales training company provide comprehensive sales training in all the areas identified in the sales team evaluation.
10. Annual Review, tweak and repeat.

Ready to get started?  Let’s go!