Five Fascinating Methods to Effectuate Sales Forecasting
A sales forecast actually means to predict what a sales person or team sells in a specific period of time. E Sales forecasts allows you to identify the potential issues which may be a major hurdle for you in future and rectify it before something miss happens.
Sales forecasting is used by managers to track individual sales representative’s performance and predict how much business the team can close and deal with. It is also used by higher levels of business administration in an organization for the growth.
It has key role to play in major decisions of a company processes, recruitment, budgeting, growth analysis and goal setting for a time period.
Coming to the methods of performing sales forecast we have five major methodologies which may vary in their results.
Opportunity stage forecasting: This method of sales forecast seems to be easier than any other as it is completely based on sales pipeline. It mainly considers how likely a deal is to be closed with what budget and what is the percentage of total leads carrying it to minimum of demo sessions.
Once you are ready with these data periodically, you just need to multiply each deal’s potential value with the probability of it being closed. Though the results may seem to be inaccurate at the end, try to achieve approximately to reach the goal. To get maximum results out of this method, an accurate target research is a must need.
Length of sales cycle: Sales leads may be generated by different source as in leads generated from you, or from reference, or social media or any other references. Length of every sales cycle from these leads vary. An average life cycle of a sales deal is 6 months. But this may not be the same with leads you get from reference, as they don’t need to talk to you much and close the deals soon. While an organic lead takes up to 8 months to close.
In this method you can hardly predict that the deal will be closed generously as it is completely dependent on objective data and not on anybody’s reviews or feedback.
Lead qualification questions will help you determine the most promising, high priority sales leads. Instead of mechanically passing around all of your sales leads to the team, you could pass on that which would be the most productive. Inbound lead qualification is a largely underrated and under-appreciated skill that more B2B companies need to consider investments in. It helps you gain valuable visibility into the intentions of your sales prospects, and gives you a way to organize your sales processes around your best sales leads. This in turn will ensure that your sales leads have the best long term results and larger profitability.