How important is it for you to achieve your forecasted sales?

Hello Sales Reset Community

How important is it for you to achieve your forecasted sales?

For most of the people reading Weekly Sales Reset, the answer is that it’s HUGELY important!

However, many people in sales roles are unaware of all the reasons WHY achieving sales forecasts is so important.

This week, we’ll review the role of your sales forecasts.

More practically, we’ll tell you what you can do to achieve your sales forecast more reliably and with growing confidence! 😀

Let’s get into it.

How you'll improve sales results this week

• Why are sales forecasts so important?

• How to achieve forecast sales more reliably

  • 1. Forecasting Accurately

  • 2. Achieving Forecast Reliably

• How to practice better sales forecasting this week

• End of Week - Reflective Practice

Why are sales forecasts so important?

Every business that employs salespeople has a business plan.

A business plan is a roadmap that outlines goals, strategies, and operations. It helps everyone stay organized, attract investors, and grow the business smoothly. At the heart of the business plan is a summary of expected income and expenditure.

However, predicting the future isn’t easy!

One of the hardest things to predict is what will be sold and when to expect payments. The timing of when cash hits your company’s bank account can keep your finance colleagues awake at night.

And it’s the availability of money that supports every part of your company and all of your colleagues in every role.

This is why achieving forecast sales is so hugely important to your business.

When salespeople develop a reputation for reliably achieving forecasts, everybody will have greater confidence in their plans. They will have growing confidence to invest in developing every aspect of your business.

From your perspective, forecasting sales is important because it helps you know what income to plan for!

How to achieve forecast sales more reliably

Now we’ve clarified why achieving sales forecasts is so important, how can we do it?

There are two practical things to get right:

1. Forecasting accurately:

   1. Annual and quarterly sales quotas and targets

   2. Real-time forecasting of current pipeline opportunities

2. Achieving your forecast reliably:

   1. Managing your pipeline as effectively as possible

   2. Being as realistic as possible about your opportunity metrics

   3. All aspects of selling effectively!

1. Forecasting Accurately

Sales team leaders work with their senior colleagues to agree on budgets, quotas and targets that create expectations for annual, quarterly and monthly sales results. These longer-term forecast numbers go into the business plan.

Everybody involved with achieving the business plan will always be very interested in knowing whether their sales team is on track to achieve these planned sales results.

This is why it’s so important for you to maintain your sales pipeline as accurately as possible. The bigger the opportunity, and the closer it is to closing, the more care you should take with forecasting the three key elements of each opportunity:

• Size: What is the size of each opportunity, typically reported in terms of revenue or margin?

• Probability: What is the probability of winning this opportunity?

• Close Date: When do you expect to get the final agreement, sometimes referred to as the “legal close” as opposed to a “verbal close”?

2. Achieving Forecast Reliably

So, here’s the big question. How do you achieve your sales forecasts increasingly reliably?

The single best strategy for reliably achieving forecasted sales is to always have a surplus of opportunities from which to choose. This means committing enough time to effective prospecting.

However, there’s no single answer to the challenge of achieving forecasted sales. The way to achieve forecast sales with increasing reliability is to do everything in our Sales Reset Mastery wheel increasingly well!

You’ll need to do all these things, remembering to prioritise the delivery of the outcomes your customers need when they use your products and services.

When you prioritise the delivery of your customers’ outcomes instead of prioritising achieving your sales forecasts, you’ll be more likely to achieve your forecast sales!

How to practice better sales forecasting this week

A couple of weeks ago, we looked in detail at how you can manage your sales pipeline more effectively. It’s time to build on the work you did when you worked at improving the quality of your pipeline.

Have a good look at your recent sales forecasts. If possible, do this in a joint review with your sales team leader.

What is the evidence of the accuracy of your sales forecasting? When you compare what you forecasted with what you achieved, how accurate was your forecasting?

Once you’ve undertaken this review, come to some clear conclusions about what you can do better to improve your sales forecasting and achieve your forecasts more reliably.

As you develop your reputation for achieving your forecast sales reliably, everybody involved with your company’s business plan will thank you!

And you can look forward to all the benefits of achieving your sales forecasts with greater confidence.

End of Week - Reflective Practice

At the end of this week, ask yourself these key questions:

We hope you’ve found this Weekly Sales Reset valuable.

Have a great week!

The Sales Reset Team

Here’s a link to a page explaining how these weekly newsletters are designed to help you learn and practice your customer success selling skills.

Please feel free to unsubscribe using the link at the bottom of this email if these newsletters are no longer valuable to you!

Community of Practice

Ask Questions, Share Your Experience

If you have any questions or experience to share:

• LinkedIn Group - Join our World-Class Customer Success Selling Group on LinkedIn to ask questions or comment.

• Sales Reset Together Community - Click here to learn more about our private community of members committed to achieving and maintaining their Sales Reset.

Does your sales team leader or coach subscribe to our companion weekly newsletter, Sales Reset Leaders?