Only 49% of salespeople believe their company’s sales forecast to be accurate, according to Bluewolf’s survey of more than 1,000 global Salesforce customers. Shocking? Probably not to anyone who has ever bore responsibility for their company’s forecast.
We’ve outlined three reasons forecasts are inaccurate — and the strategies to fix them:
- Inconsistent Adoption.
There’s a rogue sales team member or entire team who, for whatever reason, uses Salesforce opportunities differently — or not at all. Everything from inconsistent opportunity stage definitions, to missing currencies or products, ensures an inaccurate forecast.The Fix: Make sure everyone from the most junior salesperson to the CEO knows what is in it for them when it comes to embracing the forecast in Salesforce. Ensure that stage definitions are clear, and openly address technical barriers to adoption with every type of sales user.
- Not using collaborative forecasting.
Salesforce’s customizable forecasting asks salespeople to enter their own a number as their forecast while the collaborative forecasting feature bases the forecast on active opportunities. brings transparency and proof to a company’s forecast.The Fix: Schedule a migration to collaborative forecasting that includes training, especially for sales managers. They are the group who will have to steer the most behavior change.
- Forecasting outside of Salesforce.
The final forecast is built in some other application because other departments, who need access to the forecast, do not use Salesforce. As long as departments (and systems) remain separate, forecasts will be out of date.The Fix: Salesforce1 is a powerful platform that can be integrated with legacy systems. Even if other departments retain their own systems, an integration between Salesforce and legacy systems enables forecasting in Salesforce and eliminates the step of manually transferring data between systems.
Did you fix your company’s inaccurate forecast? Share your story below. Download the full report to find out how leading companies across the globe use Salesforce today, and their plans for the coming year. Or, benchmark yourself to see how your metrics measure against our data.
