If you’re a sales executive you have got to be tired of explaining why the monthly or quarterly forecast keeps coming up short?  I understand because I have managed large teams of sales representatives ranging in experience from 1 year to more than 20 years.  I shared your experience then I decided to fix it.  What I learned is that there is one main reason why the forecast consistently disappoints and a fairly easy way to address this challenge.

The problem starts with lead qualification.  Your sales team is most likely made up of a few senior representatives, several others with 3- 5 years of experience and some that are just starting out in sales.  Each representative sees a new opportunity differently.  Some think it’s highly qualified while others do not, and that’s the problem.  What I discovered is that the sales representatives who were doing well and delivering new business were doing a good job at vetting each new lead while others were chasing tire kickers.  Knowing this my team and I then embarked on a simple task and that was to create set of criteria for rating and scoring each new opportunity.

We then incorporated the criteria into the Commence CRM system which automated the process and ensured that every sales representative regardless of experience level was qualifying new business opportunities according to a specific set of criteria.  The results speak for themselves.  The team became laser focused on the most promising new opportunities instead of wasting valuable time on those that were not.  Our close ratios went up, our forecast was much more accurate and we realized higher monthly and quarterly revenues.  The Commence CRM software became a simple affordable solution to a difficult business problem.

Image “quality decisionmaking (271/365)” by Allix Rogers on Flickr under Creative Commons license.