While it most often falls short, forecastingForecasting Forecasting is a prediction or calculation of a trend or event likely to occur in the future based on qualitative, quantitative and historical data as well as emergent but relevant factors. is a very vital CRM component. This is rather interesting, because while other CRM functions are certainly important—for example, a CRM would be useless without tracking opportunities—a company can no longer survive without accurate forecasting.
Why Do We Need It?
As we move forward into the future, the need for forecasting only becomes more apparent. Why? Because competition only becomes more intense. To continually succeed, an enterpriseEnterprise Enterprise (in the context of sales) is a relatively large organization typically composed of multiple levels, locations, and departments which need multi-layer software systems that support collaboration across a large corporate environment. will need the best forecasting system they can possibly obtain. You can no longer afford to be “approximate” with forecasts to miss the mark by 20 or 30 percent. You have to be dead on the money. I know many sales managers would argue with me, but right now would venture to say that most mid-level companies have very inaccurate forecasting systems.
You can only manage sales with certainty, and know you’re on safe ground, when you know where your sales figures are most probably headed. Then when you have your sales meetings and set quotas, you’re able to know how each rep is performing, and can drill down into each opportunity to get details where needed.
Risk Minimization
With accurate forecasting, the chief benefit is that you are minimizing risk factors for the company. And combining Forecasting with our other powerful new feature, Opportunity Fitness, opportunities can be leveraged like never before. You now have an overview of where the company should truly invest its time and resources.
Correct focus is only brought about through precise forecasting. As I’ve said many times, when you lose focus, you lose efficiency. When you lose efficiency, you lose productivity.
Features of Pipeliner CRM Forecasting
Different date ranges
With no question, sales forecasting within a certain date range for the entire company should be possible, and with most CRM systems, it is. But with Pipeliner’s Forecasting, you can actually set different forecasting date ranges for different sales teams or different reps. You can even set forecasting ranges for various different productProduct Product refers to anything (an idea, item, service, process or information) that meets a need or a desire and is offered to a market, usually but not always at a price. lines or categories.
Not many forecasting tools possess this kind of precision.
Selection of reps and processes
Pipeliner CRM Forecasting allows you to select one or more different salespeople for forecasting—but it goes well beyond that. Many companies have different sales processes for different products or types of sales (new or repeat, for example). You can select which sales processSales Process Sales Process is a series of strategic steps or a set of activities aimed at driving sales growth through the alignment of personnel, market insight, methodologies, relevant business units, and technology. or processes you want to include in your forecast for a particular rep or set of reps.
As part of forecasting, specific fields can even be selected.
QuotaQuota Quota is a predefined benchmark indicating the amount of sales a selling unit such as a sales rep or a regional sales team should achieve within a given period, often used as a measure of success, performance and eligibility for commissions and other rewards. accuracy
Another crucial function of forecasting is the setting of quotas. Setting inaccurate quotas only results in targets not being met, and the forecasts being missed. Pipeliner Forecasting does away with such inaccuracy.
For example, a yearly quota of $3 million could be divided evenly between two sales reps. This would, of course, come out to $1.5 million per rep.
Any sales managerSales Manager Sales Manager is an executive who leads a sales unit, team or department by setting goals and meeting targets, formulating plans and policies, designating tasks, and developing salespeople. will tell you, however, that reps do not all produce the same. Therefore, you can divide the quota by the reps, based on their historical average performance. You then might have one rep quota set at $2,267,074.46, and the other at $732,925.54, to add up to the $3 million quota.
Pipeliner’s forecasting feature will also divide the per-rep quota into 12 months, based on each rep’s past monthly performance.
What if you want to view the forecast by different performance types, such as by ranking? You can rearrange your display to do so.
Sales management is made far easier through accurate sales person quotas based on historical performance.
List View, Pipeliner View and Chart View
There are even different ways through which past performance dataData Data is a set of quantitative and qualitative facts that can be used as reference or inputs for computations, analyses, descriptions, predictions, reasoning and planning. can be evaluated. You can select particular users, or all users, and instantly create a line chart showing their performance month-by-month, or by any period of time you wish. The chart can be by the sum for the period of time, or running sum which incrementally adds the later period’s total to the last.
Drilling down into a particular sales period only requires clicking on it. You can then view the specific deals adding up to that period. Or, you can create a list view of the deals that add up to this amount, and select any particular columns you want to see.
Pipeliner CRM is the only system available today that displays a pipelinePipeline Sales pipelineis a visual representation of the stage prospects are in the sales process. view of forecasted deals, showing where exactly they fall in the particular pipeline stages. This view can include a single rep, a group, or all.
Filter deals within a chart to only see particular types of sales, deals, or products, or any other qualifier you specify.
Pipeliner CRM is the only system to provide functionality for instant dynamic visualization through collaborative forecasting.
You Can’t Do It Without Pipeliner
It’s fortunate that our CRM is as visual as it is, and given to accuracy of data, for accurate forecasting would not be possible without reliable data. This means, of course, that you won’t find this level of forecasting anywhere except with Pipeliner CRM.
When you put our forecasting feature to work for yourself, you’ll realize that there is nothing like Pipeliner CRM anywhere. It is quite simply the industry’s most functional, usable, and powerful CRM.
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