Jason Jordan (pictured) is without doubt the preeminent thought leader on sales management and I was privileged to meet him in Melbourne at a sales leadership conference recently where we were both keynote speakers. Jason delivered a riveting presentation highlighting the absurdity of most forecasting practices within corporations and the huge amount of wasted time in revisiting forecasts (in some organizations a daily practice!) instead of coaching on opportunities.
Jason is writing a new book and it will contain insights and frameworks for forecasting. He outlined his pipeline and forecasting principles as follows:
1. Sales management to select the right framework:
• Opportunity-based. For longer sales-cycles where deals go through stages
• Account-based. Where accounts have historical stable revenue performance
• Territory-based. For geographic or portfolio based with predicable yields
• Call-based. For transactional selling where results link directly to activities
2. Sales management then applies a formula to the framework based on market conditions, projected growth, anticipated churn, etc.
3. Individual sales people then document [historical] facts and assumptions to rationally provide a worst case, probable and best case forecast
Here is an article published by The Sales Management Association which goes in to greater depth and a must read.
Follow Jason Jordan online and also read Cracking The Sales Management Codewhich is without doubt the best book ever written on sales management.
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Tony Hughes is ranked as the #1 influencer on professional selling in Asia-Pacific and is a keynote speaker and best selling author. This article was originally published in LinkedIn where you can also follow Tony's award winning blog. Also visit Tony's keynote speaker website at www.TonyHughes.com.au or his sales methodology website at http://www.rsvpselling.com/.
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