Author Archives: Ming Wu

Core Tenets of a Great Sales Forecasting Solution: Flexibility

Thursday, October 8th, 2009

Can your sales forecast solution adapt to changes in the business at the same pace as you? The needs of your business are constantly evolving and so should your solutions. Home-grown and custom solutions are built to solve a set of problems based on needs at a particular point in time, and have limited foresight into your future needs.

Continuous investment is necessary to keep your forecasting system in sync with the needs of your business. This might involve the whiz-kid who maintains your excel macros and formulas, or your internal IT group and their request queue, or perhaps the consultants that originally built your custom solution. But what happens when your rockstar leaves the company and your IT team is booked on a higher priority project? If you have time and money to spare, you might be able to work something out, but in this economy, time and money are the two things that you cherish most.

The key to flexibility with your sales forecasting solution is having control over your own destiny. Your solution must be able to solve your current needs and also provide you with a roadmap of solutions for your future. It should equip you with a set of best practices to help keep you ahead of your competition. And it must provide you with the capability and resources to manage your own destiny. The more that you can do within the system, the better.

Don’t get me wrong—your current solutions and systems have helped you get to where you are today, but they could also be holding you back. As your needs evolve, so should your systems. If you haven’t taken a hard look at your sales forecasting solution lately, or can’t remember when you last evaluated it, then you’re long overdue for a check up.

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Core Tenets of a Great Sales Forecasting Solution: Value

Thursday, October 1st, 2009

Is the time that you spend assembling the sales forecast a good use of your time? Companies that use Microsoft Excel to manage their sales forecast often refer to the process as “Excel Hell.”

That’s an understatement for many.

In our earlier discussion, we focused on adoption and how to make the system easy for sales reps. For many companies, Excel is the tool of choice to satisfy the adoption requirement. Sales reps are familiar with it, it’s easy to use and it can be tailored to exactly what a company needs it to be. But what happens if you are on the receiving end of those spreadsheets?

If you only have a handful of sales reps, the process might be manageable today. But your aspirations probably include having a much larger sales organization and one that continues to grow. How long do you have before your Excel process fails you? One of our customers used to spend four weeks assembling the forecast in Excel and by the time they were done, the forecast was already out of date! What a great use of time!

The value of a sales forecasting solution goes far beyond the collection of the forecast. That is just the beginning. A complete sales forecasting solution provides real-time insight into what is changing in your business and why. Whether it is at a summary or detailed level, your sales forecasting solution should give you the information that you need so that you can take action with razor-sharp precision.

Does your sales forecasting system provide you with the information that you need, or are you still cutting and pasting spreadsheets?

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Core Tenets of a Great Sales Forecasting Solution: Adoption

Thursday, October 1st, 2009

Systems only work when people use them. It doesn’t matter whether your solution is über-secure, uses the latest technology or costs a significant amount of money. If nobody uses the system, then the effort was a waste.

One of the biggest issues with collecting the sales forecasts is getting sales reps to forecast. Let’s face it — sales reps don’t like forecasting and will avoid anything that takes time away from selling. So, how is it possible to get them to adopt anything?

Option 1: Coersion

Sound familiar? Sure, you might be able to force users to enter data into the system. But have you ever seen someone do a really good job when his or her arm was being twisted? Not to mention, this method requires constant reinforcement to change old habits. If you’re lucky, you might get something that you could call a “forecast” But it’s probably not high quality to begin with, which doesn’t leave you with much to work with.

Option 2: Prayer

I heard a rumor that this has worked in the past. Once. Unfortunately, you’re still the one on the hook for making the system work.

Option 3: Tailor-made

A minute saved is a minute selling. What do sales reps care most about? Closing deals and making their numbers. Forecasting is necessary, but the less painful it is, the better. If you want them to forecast, make the process as simple and fast as possible. Eliminate redundant data entry tasks like typing in the same number in two different places and help save your reps time.

If you’re getting good data from the field, be sure to give the team something back as well. Help them run its business better. Use the field’s data to show it where the reps can improve. Uncover opportunities, patterns and trends with facts from their forecast. No matter what, they still won’t like the doing it, but if the system is easy to use and helps them sell more, you’ll have achieved a tolerable medium.

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Core Tenets of a Great Sales Forecasting Solution

Monday, September 21st, 2009

By now, nearly everyone has implemented some type of sales forecasting solution. In most cases, Microsoft® is the de facto solution. Some organizations have customized functionality in their CRM system as an alternative, and a handful of companies have built their own home-grown solution. All of these solutions may fit the bill in some fashion, but what are the things that really make a sales forecasting solution great?

  1. Adoption
  2. Value
  3. Flexibility

A sales forecasting solution must address the needs of the users and the business first. The technology or tool that is used to solve the problem should be molded to fit these core requirements. Anything else would be akin to hammering a square peg into a round hole.

Technology requirements such as security, scalability and maintainability all need to be included as part of the discussion, but should be evaluated with the core principles in mind. Over the next few weeks, we will cover the importance of these three areas and why they can make or break your solution.

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