Being able to do forecast sales and meet them is magic. Isn’t it?
Recently, I’ve being reading many books on sales management. Many of theses books were from a large company point of view, with 268 sales reps and such. They were typically public companies with quarterly results to report and shareholders expecting the continuous growing sales and profitability. These companies would talk about the certainty required in the measurement of the sales process. “Having a few in the bag, just in case” was always a safety being used. “You must be paranoid”, another would say repeatedly.
When you can pay for the best of everything:
1) You have strong market intelligence of what the buyer wants
2) You know what the markets’ purchasing plans for the coming year
3) You know what you can produce and can move fast to add capacity for contingency reasons
4) You know your sales cycle and lead time to sales
5) You have a pipeline and understand the probabilities at the various stages
6) Your team of 268 sales reps are well trained and managed by the best
So what if you have none of these.
The principles still apply. Do what you can do.
Progress is everything.
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