Achieving Predictable, Consistent and Reliable Sales Forecasts in Complex Sales

Do you find that opportunities slip from one month to the next, sales professionals are over optimistic, dead cert deals come to nothing and time is wasted chasing unwinnable business?

You have to explain to your CEO why you failed to hit your forecast!
B2B sales leaders in complex / solution sales are under particular pressure to improve forecasts and deliver greater sales productivity. Managers spend as much as half a day a week on forecasting activity. Yet 80% of sales organisations miss their forecasts. In the US alone this costs businesses an estimated $50 billion a year (Source: CFO Magazine).

I meet hundreds of sales professionals each year, and always ask the same question: “What is your win rate?” They almost always respond with the same answer – 3 out of 10. This means that, with 5 million B2B sales people across the US and UK, the equivalent of 3.5 million of them are wasting all their time on losing, it’s their biggest waste of time!

The discipline of qualification is designed to avoid this happening. Clearly, many sales professionals working in complex sales environments have yet to fully understand the underlying principles. There are deals which are winnable and deals which will never be won. Too often sales teams continue ploughing in resources when a forensic view of the data would say walk away and that’s not just at the beginning of the sale.

Will they ACT? Will they act NOW? Will they act with US? need to be answered before you can forecast an opportunity. Robust qualification is further hindered by CRM systems’ failure to support a continuous qualification process.

SCOTSMAN® Commitment Manager helps overcome this issue, enables sales leaders to take back control of opportunity management and gain a forensic understanding of their pipeline. To learn more about the missing link for today’s pipeline and opportunity management click here and discover the benefits Advance’s SCOTSMAN® Commitment Manager for Dynamics 365 and Salesforce.com.

We are offering Complementary Consultations in B2B Solution Sales to explore the planning and qualification options suitable for the specific sales processes and behaviours in your organisation. To take up this offer click here. With our help, you can make your opportunity and pipeline management a more scientific process.