Improving The Accuracy of Your Sales Forecast

Having sales associates match the sales forecast is every sales manager’s dream… But with so many factors affecting a successful forecast, sales managers are struggling.

We here at Growth Strategy Dynamics believe there are three things that are critical to achieving the forecast 100%:

1. Understanding what factors are affecting the for forecast, your deals and pipeline: In many cases, not closing the sale doesn’t come down to a “yes” or “no,” but rather no decision being made at all regarding the deal. The reason for this? Sales associates are lacking visibility. Reps are selling at one level, but then lose visibility as the client moves along the funnel, so aren’t made aware of higher-up decisions being made that affect their ability to close the sale (i.e. budget cuts).

2. Discipline: As a sales manager, you need have discipline. You have to be actively and regularly inspecting the pipeline and must be managing the entire sales process – from start to finish, from cold call to final decision.

3. Don’t get stuck in the idea that you can automate the entire forecasting process: There is a lot of pressure put on forecast accuracy, resulting in a large amount of analytic/measurement tools being developed. Though this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it is leading industry people to believe that you don’t need the managers’ continuous coaching or inspection. This just is not true; an automated process does not always result in an accurate forecast. These tools must be coupled with managers’ coaching, because without proper inspection things get missed. These tools may be able to identify the problems, but it is the managers who have to fix them. The solution? Managers must start (and continue) coaching early in the sales process in order to catch the issues before they grow.