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It seems that all is not lost and there is a great debate occurring about sales forecasting accuracy that gives me hope that the status quo ‘sales forecasting inaccuracy has always been like that’ is not acceptable anymore.
The tug of war is over the sales process. Two camps are claiming the right to the sales process. There are those that believe the sales process is a series of activities, Activity Based, and there are those that promote the sales process as the monitoring and managing of behaviour. Even within this group there is a divide as to what behaviour is being monitored, is it that of the sales person, the customer, the product in the market, the market itself, etc.
I believe that to obtain greater accuracy in the sale forecast one must understand all aspects of the sale whether it be the customer’s decision making process, the product suitability within in a market sector, industry performance, and economic, governmental and regulatory factors. Without monitoring all of them on a continual basis and maintaining the history of how each of the factors are behaving in certain circumstances it is nigh impossible to refine the criteria by which sales opportunities are scrutinised to gain an understanding as the probability of success of each opportunity.
There is another key factor, the behaviour of the sales person. Has he or she the experience, ability, motivation to succeed. I’ve left this factor to last but this is usually the first port of call for management when things are not going so well. In the inimitable words of Sir Alan ‘You’re fired’. Is that the easy way out? Have we looked at all the behaviours before coming to the conclusion that it is the sales person’s fault?
We need systems such as SymVolli that will allow us to monitor different behaviours and then we can decide what needs to be done.
Activity versus behaviour! Surely activity is a consequence of understanding behaviour. Once there is an understanding of behaviour one can decide what activity needs to be undertaken. Both have an important role to play, but not one at the expense of the other.
At least there is a debate and I believe it will lead to sales forecasting accuracy. What do you think?
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