It’s Not Magic; It’s Your Sales Pipeline

I traveled down to Las Vegas last week with my son, who was playing in a baseball tournament. He is 14 years old and was surprised at all the activity and flashing lights along “The Strip”. Thankfully, his young eyes were focused on all of the advertising, promoting the many magic shows in Las Vegas. While thinking about writing this blog and being in Vegas, I realized that for a lot of sales organizations, sales forecasting has the same mystique around it as magic does. And like magic, sales forecasting takes a lot of practice and execution to be successful.

Often, while talking to sales leaders, I am asked: “What does it take to consistently produce an accurate sales forecast?” The short answer is that it takes a lot of work. The long answer is to build an accurate and consistent forecasting process with relevant technology, dependable communication, and training. Then stay focused, be disciplined and pay attention to the details. When you do this, sales forecasting will not only become more accurate, but through analysis, you will be able to accelerate Sales Velocity!

To increase Sales Velocity, you must improve the accuracy of your Sales Forecast. To improve accuracy, your team must manage their Pipeline Opportunities. To execute on Pipeline Management, you must have a Sales Pipeline full of opportunities.

Sales Pipeline: The sales pipeline represents all stages of the sales process and should be measured within the “opportunity” function of the CRM tool. The sales process should shadow the buyer’s decision-making process. The Sales Pipeline is a strong indicator of medium to long-term opportunities and should not just be made up of “deals” that are near the end of the sales cycle.

Pipeline Management: Sales management should use their CRM tool as they review their sales team’s pipeline. Managements’ knowledge of their sales team opportunities is the basis of Pipeline Management. Consistency results when your team executes a common sales process and the management team supports that process to manage the Pipeline of opportunities.

Sales Forecast: The sales forecast is based upon company and customer timelines, the deal requirements, and therefore has artificially imposed constraints. Forecasting accuracy is the result of studying and practicing the “the science, then art” of Pipeline Management (the science of having all opportunities in your CRM system, then the art of understanding where the sales person and customer are in the decision making process).

Sales Velocity: Maximize the effectiveness of your sales team to increase the rate of sales dollars brought into your business, or the speed you move sales dollars into your business. You can impact Sales Velocity by:

1. Shortening the sales cycle
2. Increase the number of opportunities
3. The size of the deals
4. Your win rate

When you improve all four of the above elements, you are practicing Pipeline Management.

So, how do you “get good” at all of the above? It’s about processes, technology and people. If you read my prior blogs: “Getting Tight” it covers a common sales language/a sales process, which is key to having a successful Pipeline Management practice. “Hey Coach, Is This Right?” is about people and about coaching sales folks on their Sales Pipeline (Pipeline Management). “CRM, What’s Your Data Plan?” covers CRM strategy, the use of technology, and collecting opportunity data for review and analytics. All of these are key to pulling off a little magic.

So, “Poof”. Are you closer to pulling off a little magic called an Accurate Forecast?

By:

Jim Williams, M.B.A.
Total Innovation Group Inc., Associate

and

Sam O’Rear, M.A.
Total Innovation Group Inc., Senior Partner
Published by TIGI