Keys to Effective Sales Forecasting

Forecasting with Don

 

“Ok, Don, you have $350k forecasted for this quarter with Citbank, where are we in the process?”

It was our weekly forecast call and Don had been batting a big fat zero for weeks. Naturally, he blamed his territory. We responded by sharing with him that having New York City by himself was a sweet gig and he needed to start taking advantage of the opportunity or move on.

So like magic, Don’s forecast goes from $0 to $500,000 in one week; half million, just like that.

“Ok Don, who are you talking to and what’s the process?”

“Well, I met this girl who works for the VP of IT. She’s going to arrange a dinner with her boss and me. I figure we’ll have a good meal, share a few drinks, and schedule a WebEx. I will show the VP a quick overview, and we should wrap this up by the end of the month.”

“The end of the month is in two weeks.”

“Right.”

“So you are telling me that a VP at a premier financial services company is going to spend $350,000 with a vendor based on one dinner and an online meeting?”

“That’s the plan.”

“And there are no formal requirements, no RFP, no evaluation team, and no evaluation process?”

“That’s why I can get it in so quickly.”

“Don, one of us on this call is stark raving stupid and fortunately it’s not me this time.”

Keys to Effective Forecasting

Weekly Forecast Review

When digging a ditch, it’s almost impossible to tell if you are progressing in a straight line. That’s why it’s important to have someone on higher ground monitoring your progress and giving direction.

In an enterprise sales environment, even the best can overlook the fundamentals. The sales manager is responsible for identifying missing fundamentals and red flags that will delay or derail your deals.

Early in my sales career, I used to take any critique as a personal insult against my sales skills. If you are the sales manager you need to be aware of the fragility of the alpha-male ego, and treat accordingly.

Who makes it to your forecast, who doesn’t?

Your forecast is the justification for your existence, treat with care.

If there is an account that is repeatedly taken up your time, they belong on your forecast. If there is no good reason to put them on your forecast, stop wasting time on them. You can go broke being a free source of information.

The Evergreen Deals

I know the person that took my position with a former employer. There are three companies that were on my forecast 3 years ago, that still live on today.

If there are deals in your forecast that you know will never close, call your boss, explain the facts and then remove them. You will win far more brownie points than never closing a forecast of fictitious deals.

The Fundamentals

Here are the questions that sales manager need to ask about every deal.

Who – Who will run evaluation, Who will fund with budget, Who will make the decision, Who will sign off?

What – What products and services are you pitching?

Why – Why are they looking? Why are they looking at us?

When – (Work Backwards) When do they want to be live? When do they want training? When do they want to make a vendor selection? When will they have their short list? When will they invite vendors for first round evaluations?

The “Gut” Explained

Ok so what percentage do you put on your deals? Try this:

25% – You are in the deal

50% – You are on the short list of three or less vendors

75% – You are selected, waiting for final executive sign off

90% – Paperwork complete, waiting on purchase order

100% – Paperwork received and processed by accounting

Any suggestion? Email us at sales.wars@gmail.com

Bellwethers

I’ve been on the road a lot lately and recently had a panic situation that prompted a frantic call home. One of my bellwether measurements was out of range.

Let me explain.

When you’re married with two kids and managing two careers things get hectic and you actually forget to focus on certain intimate aspects of your relationship with your spouse.

The warning system that I use to alert me to that fact that my wife and I haven’t shared any “alone time” is Flo, the insurance spokesperson.

You’ve seen the commercials where Flo is the customer service rep in a white-washed virtual store that sells all types of insurance coverage. Under normal circumstances, Flo doesn’t strike me as all that attractive. But as the time between spousal “sessions” grows, Flo becomes more appealing.

This past week, one of Flo’s commercials inspired a visionary desire to wash over me.

I felt a longing to find a little cottage on Cape Cod where Flo and I could spend our summers and focus our time on Flo’s life, her thoughts, her dreams, and her unrealized ambitions.

We will stroll hand-in-hand down the beach while she shared the manuscript that she wrote in college and tried to get published only to find that there was no demand for political manifestos inspired by the writings of Alfred E. Neuman.

Later, after I finished painting her toe nails and agreeing that she should have been the captain of the cheerleading squad in high school and not that tramp Jennifer, I would craft a series of sonnets celebrating her life, her womanhood, and the inspiration Flo has given to dozens of aspiring insurance professionals. I would then sing these to her while accompanying myself on the lute.

And so that I could imbibe all that is Flo, I would invite her mother to come live with us.

We hear a lot of negative news these days on the state of the economy; the federal debt, trade imbalances, and unemployment is still higher than historical norms.

But remember, bad news sells, good news doesn’t.  Even the weatherman knows that people stay tuned in longer, the worse they perceive the weather to be.

So, as the bad news flows like malt liquor at a tractor pull, keep your eye on the issues that apply most to your business.

• Are their companies in your industry that are attracting new investment?
• Is your base of potential customers growing?
• How are your competitors doing?
• What is your customer attrition rate?
• Is revenue/client dropping or stable?
• What does your 90 day sales pipeline look like? Are there new accounts on the pipeline or just carryovers from previous quarters?

Real Estate, Economics, and Politics are all local, don’t let a “national trend” blind you to a “local opportunities”.

Now back to me.

So I call my wife and tell her that the ”Flo Alarm” has gone off and that when I get home, she needs to bar the door because she is in for the most intense four and a half minutes of her life.

As she starts to cry, she recites the passage from the Southern Junior Leaguers handbook that says that these types of acts are no longer required since we have birthed a girl and/or junior republican.

I politely interrupt her to let her know that I love her and that I have a court order.

Buzzword Bingo

The comedian Steve Martin once said “Mambo Dogface to the Banana Patch”; explaining that if you intentionally and consistently jumbled your words when speaking around a toddler, that the toddler’s first day in Kindergarten would be extremely entertaining, and I really couldn’t agree more.  The point is that when it comes to personal-level communications, the focus should be on the comprehension of the parties involved, not the extremes to which the lexicon is taken.

However, as a species, we have a long-standing tradition of attempting to “enhance” our communications with clichéd words and phrases such as “net net”, “circling the wagons”, and the classic “at the end of the day”.  Recently, social media has motivated the bastardization of traditional job titles with many professionals calling themselves “ninjas”, “evangelists”, and “chief happy officers”.

Read the rest of the article here -http://gosmallbiz.com/small-business-blog/358-buzzword-bingo

Signs Your Sales Rep is a Moron

Some sales-centric publications claim that 65% of sales people do not belong in sales. As a sales manager you wonder at times if that number is a tad low. However, as a service to our readers, we’ve put this quick reference list together to help you spot those 65%’ers in your organization.

Signs Your Sales Rep is a Moron

• They talk more than anyone else

• They try to create some remote, third-party connection with prospects. For example “Yeah, my cousin did time in your state. So we are like family.”

• They claim that your solution can do everything, just name it. For example. “You want an open, yet proprietary architecture that will randomly reset the credentials in your enterprise single sign on layer? Oh heck, no problem.”

• They know nothing about the prospect, their business model, or even the city in which the prospect is located, but pretend they do. For example “Valdosta, GA? Oh yeah, that’s where they grow those onions. It’s like a second home to me.” (Vidalia, GA grows the onions)

• Their presentation is focused on the history of the company, the great things about the products and services, yet says nothing about how they will help the prospect or why really anyone should do business with your company. For example “Now that we are done with our three hour overview of our products for DOS, let’s talk pricing”

• They won’t get off the phone even though the prospect has given valid reasons to support the claim that they are not interested. For example “Ok, I know that your bank really doesn’t do anything with South American Derivates, but can you at least watch our demo?

• They trash the competition, a lot. For example “I’m not saying that your current vendor likes to skin the pelts off puppies, but have you ever seen a puppy around their offices?”

• They start a blog for sales stories

Great Sales Sins – Trashing Your Competition

“Hi Bob, have you tried “natural” male enhancement? I saw the commercial on TV last night and immediately thought of you”

“Wow Barbara, that dress looks great. Did you get it in the “big girls” section at Lane Bryant?”

“So the wife and I just joined a swingers club……”

I would hope the readers of this blog would agree that these are lines that would exude a certain level of awkwardness and discomfort if they appeared in casual conversation.

However, as sales professionals we can generate similar feelings of discomfort with our prospects if we start to trash our competition.

I hate to burst your bubble, but you remember that great conversation you had where you felt like you and the prospect really “connected” and you shared how your competitor’s solution has been linked to Herpes Simplex 10?

Well here’s a news flash, your competitor had that same “connecting” conversation and when the subject of your company came up, he responded this with this:

“You are looking at ACME? You know they do very well in Java shops and I’ve seen some good press on them. However, knowing your internal infrastructure, project requirements, and with the fact that your CEO is sponsoring this project, I am confident that our solution, along with the reputation of our company, will not only surpass your technical needs, but offer a degree of comfort and validation that you are doing business with the industry leader.”

See the difference? Herpes vs. Industry Leader?

You should always feel comfortable asking your prospects which of your competitors they are evaluating.  If they respond with “Oh, you are the only vendor we are evaluating” you should start panicking because there is no way a serious purchase is going to be made without multiple providers being evaluated, unless, of course, you are Halliburton and you are selling into a Republican administration.

If you prospect is hesitant to give you the names of the others, calm their concerns by saying “The reason I am asking is that there are a good many vendors who do what we do, in their own unique way, some provide simple, cost-effective solutions while others provider enterprise-grade, robust systems.  If you are looking at vendors with whom I don’t normally compete, then I will know that one of us should not be taking up your time.”

If they still refuse, let it go.

If they ask your opinion about a competitor, start with a complement and then work in how you are different.  See example above.  If you have a good nugget of knowledge, like you replaced another vendor, save that until you get further into the evaluation.  You want to knock a vendor out when you are one of three, not when you are one of ten.

If you want an interesting exercise, call some prospects who went with the other guy and ask them “What do you enjoy about the system you picked?”  If you stay friendly, and polite, they will sometimes start slipping in the things they don’t like about your competitor as well.

Good luck.

Dated competitive intel is about as useful as a Kardashian math tutor

Competitive intelligence can help you position your solution on higher ground if used properly, but if you’re an idiot, it can be accelerate to a quick departure.

The best way to start this story is from the end. We hired a sales rep, Steve, who had recently worked at a competitor, “Blue Spot Technologies”. After his hiring, Steve shared how, at his old company, he competed against us once at an account that was one of the most bizarre and easiest wins for him and his company. He barely put forth any effort and was sure that he had lost when he received a phone call asking for contracts and the client’s nervous desire to be implemented as quickly as possible.

Now, as we rewind a little, the situation was that “Horizons Corporation” was evaluating solutions and had narrowed the finalist down to us and Blue Spot.

As part of their due diligence Horizons decided to have a PoC or “Proof of Concept” exercise. A PoC is where a vendor comes on-site and installs a reasonable representation of the proposed solution and has the technical teams and client users perform scripted exercises. As a vendor I despise these things, but if I were recommending how to evaluate solutions, this would be it.

So we schedule the PoC with Horizons with our rep Don and the Sales Engineer, DJ, the guy who would have to do the majority of the work.

As always seems to be the case, Horizons was located a good distance away from a major airport and our team had to drive several hours to reach their location. Because of scheduling conflicts DJ and Don had to travel separately.

DJ arrived early morning the first day and spent the better part of the day installing, configuring, and finally setting up our PoC system.

One of the issues that we were battling was that Blue Spot’s user interface was perceived as superior and our team’s job was to educate the prospect that the effectiveness of a user interface is relative to the task at hand.

While Blue Spot’s interface was great for editing content that was already posted on a website, it was poorly designed for creating a multi-page document, one of our strengths. After numerous hours, DJ’s attention to detail and thorough alignment of our solution with their challenges was yielding us some leverage in the evaluation.

With two hours left in the day, Don showed up.

Don enters the office, makes a brief exchange of handshakes and asks for a private office where he “could make some calls”. Nothing like putting the prospect first.

After some time Don emerges and declares” Who want steaks!!!? Tell me your best steakhouse in town and we are going!!!!!” The legend continues that he finished this off with some Neanderthal “booyaaa”, but those reports can’t be confirmed.

Two poor saps, who didn’t really want to go, but felt awkward in not accepting this sudden display of generosity, raised their hands.

On a side note here, our marketing team was responsible for maintaining a library of intelligence on our competitors. The challenge is this endeavor is that your competition doesn’t inform you of updates, so it was our understanding that we used this information only to help establish our position, not as a fodder for a full frontal assault. In fact at that time our intelligence on Blue Spot was pushing 18 months old. Don was given explicit instructions, DO NOT SHARE THIS WITH A PROSPECT!!!

So after some very expensive steaks, Don whips out the document and starts going down point by point. “Blue Spot can’t do this, so that’s bad” to which the prospect replies “No actually they do that, in fact, come to think of it, they do it better than you do”.

At this point DJ, not one to enjoy witnessing career suicide, picks up his drink and goes to play Golden Tee.

15 minutes later, DJ returns to the table to witness the prospect actually defending Blue Spot, with a fervor and zeal that exceeded the pitch that they received from the Blue Spot Sales Rep the previous week.

Don, unfazed by the omnipresent sense of failure, continues on to the second page of the out-dated intelligence document. The prospects respond with a stunned silence that was on line with what you would hear if someone quite loudly broke wind in church.

The after dinner coffees are finished and the members of the Horizons team bolt out the restaurant like greyhounds.

Don decides to debrief DJ over a few beers.

Don: “Man, that went great. It is ours to lose”.

DJ: “No……No…I don’t think so”

DJ then points out that at one point Don threw this gem out there “”OK requirement one… interface. So our interface is… you know what, I’m just going to give that one to Blue Spot, let’s take that off the table, ok?”

DJ was so enraged that he unconsciously snapped his pen while having the discussion. It was metal.

We lost the deal. Steve got his blue-bird phone call. DJ was reassigned away from Don.

Don was arrested the following week for trying to solicit sodomy from a state trooper.