Sales forecasts are one of the primary vehicles executives use to manage the expectations of company stakeholders including board members, investors, industry and Wall Street analysts, employees and customers.
Forecasts are also a future indicator of funds available to invest in major growth initiatives. As the old saying goes, “it takes money to make money.” If the organization is looking at a downward trend, they may choose not to invest in new opportunities to grow the business and may even scale back on existing projects.
Unfortunately, as important as sales forecasts are to the organization, many still struggle to produce predictable forecasts on which to base their major decisions. According to the CSO Insights 2018 Sales Performance Report (coming soon), the win rate for forecast deals continues to stagnate at an average of 47.3% for the second year in a row.
Though improving win rates is important, in this post, we’re going to