Successful, best-in-class businesses have a central repository and use predictive analysis
If you are in a day to day sales creation role you probably ask yourself, “does it really matter?” After all, you can take a “pretty good” guess, right? I suspect you may hate the dreaded monthly forecast. After all, it takes you away from selling, which is your real focus – not that crazy forecast numbers game. But there is much more to understand about how extremely important an accurate forecast is to your B2B company’s business success. A best-in-class organization maintains a central repository for all current sales deals, identified by stage or likelihood to close.
In fact, according to a recent study by the Aberdeen Group, “Sales Forecasting, How Top Performers Leverage the Past, Visualize the Present, and Improve their Future Revenue,” a trustworthy sales forecast was linked to better year over year performance. So, basically, if you want to build a roadmap on how and where to grow, you need an accurate forecast in order to plan and budget your resources to maximize growth. Intrigued? If you want to see more information, at a glance, check out this Infographic, or if you have more time, download the full report.
In our tight financial times organizations are trying to support critical sales resources and by a factor of two, the best-in-class companies have taken a strategic action of replacing ‘gut’ feelings with predictive analytics, taking the guesswork and emotion out of determining which opportunities to focus upon. In our clients we have also noticed a stronger trend for more accurate opportunites used for forecasting and determining the level of market penetration.
Helping you create accurate and timely sales forecasts is just part of what Sage SalesLogix reporting and analytics can do. Sage SalesLogix has reporting and analytics solutions for users at all levels, including Sage SalesLogix Advanced Analytics, which is designed to help you perform in-depth analysis on all CRM-related data.
Check out our business analytics and advanced analytics content. This is a great opportunity to get a full view of how to best utilize the reporting and analytics tools within Sage SalesLogix.
Are you using a CRM system as a central repository for all current sales deals, identified by stage or likelihood to close?
