Exec- Sir, I’ve procured an order for one cr!!!!

Manager – What…..one cr….but the product is unavailable and will take at least a month and a half to be produced!!!!!

 

…….and the sales went phut.

Dear, Senior Sales Leaders and Management…. This Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

This happened because either the Sales Forecast was poorly done or not done at all.   You can’t ignore the importance of forecasting and analysis in the sales process. To some extent, it can be considered the backbone of sales. Sales teams must conduct a thorough analysis of the metrics they gather to justify the choice of their strategies and assess their current performance.

It’s cliche but it is true, Building a sales forecast is both an art and a science. Accurate sales forecasts keep your leaders happy and your business healthy. It gives a clear picture of your company’s projected sales and keeps everyone’s expectations on track.

What is a Sales Forecast?

A sales forecast is an expression of expected sales revenue. A sales forecast estimates how much your company plans to sell within a certain time period (like quarter or year). The best sales forecasts do this with a high degree of accuracy.

TWO QUESTIONS EVERY SALES FORECAST ANSWERS:

1. HOW MUCH? 

2. WHEN?

Sales forecasts differ in where they’re getting their inputs – for example, they may rely on sales reps’ intuition or even artificial intelligence (AI). But all sales forecasts answer two key questions:

• How much: Each sales opportunity has its own projected amount it’ll bring into the business. Whether that’s Rs.2 crores or Rs.20 crores, sales teams have to come up with one number representing that new business. To create the number, they take everything they know about the prospect into account.
• When: Sales forecasts pinpoint a month, quarter, or year when the sales team expects the revenue to hit.

Coming up with those two projections is no easy feat. So sales teams factor in the important ingredients of who, what, where, why, and how to make their forecasts:

• Who: Sales teams make their forecasts based on who their prospects are. Depending on if their prospects are the actual decision-makers or just influencers, the forecast will be more or less exact.
  

• What: Forecasts should be based on exactly what solutions you plan to sell. In turn, that should be based on problems your prospects have voiced, which your company can uniquely solve.

• Where: Where is the buying decision made, and where will the actual products be used? Sales teams see better accuracy when they get closer (at least for a visit) to the center of the action.

• Why: Why is the prospect or existing customer considering new services from your company in the first place? Is there a compelling event making them consider it now? Without a forcing function and a clear why; the deal may stall inevitably.

• How: How does this prospect tend to make purchasing decisions? If you’re not accounting for how they do it now and how they’ve done it in the past in your forecast, it may be fuzzy math.

 Thus, a sales forecast provides answers for…..

Who? Why? What? How? Where?

Some of these elements are rooted in real facts, while others are conjecture. The longer you sell, the better you get at forecasts. That’s why they’re both an art and a science – sales forecasting is a balance of both.

Why is sales forecasting important?

One– Sales forecasting is so important to business health because products can be made available so that purchase meets demand.

Two– If the delivery comes a day or a week after it’s promised, that’ll affect customer’s satisfaction with the company – and decrease his willingness to want to do business with them again.

Sales forecasts help the entire business plan resources to ship products, pay for marketing, hire employees, and beyond. Accurate sales forecasting yields a well-oiled machine that meets customer demand, both today and in the future. And internally on sales teams, sales revenue that delivers in its estimated time period keeps leaders and collaborators happy, just like a shipment that arrives on time.

If forecasts are off, the company faces challenges that affect everything from pricing to product delivery to the end-user. Meanwhile, if forecasts are on point, the company can make better investments, perhaps hiring 20 new developers instead of 10, or building a much-needed new sales office in a prime new territory.

Who is responsible for sales forecasts?

Each organization has its own sales forecast owners. These are some of the teams who are usually responsible:

• Product leaders: They put a stake in the ground for what products will be available to sell when.

• Sales leaders: They promise the numbers that their teams will deliver. Depending on the seniority of the leader, how they forecast varies. For example, first-line managers forecast collections of opportunities, where third-line managers consider a wide set of numbers and traditional close rates to come up with an overall forecast.

• Sales reps: They report their own numbers to their managers.

No matter how a company calculates its sales forecasts, the process should be transparent. And at the end of the day, sales leadership has to be responsible to call a number. Whether met, exceeded, or missed, the forecast responsibility falls on them.

Who uses sales forecasts?

Sales forecasts touch virtually all departments in a business. For example, the finance department uses sales forecasts to decide how to make annual and quarterly investments. Product leaders use them to plan demand for new products. And the HR department uses forecasts to align recruiting needs to where the business is going. 

At some level, sales forecasting affects everyone in the company.

What are the objectives of sales forecasting?

The main objective of sales forecasting is to paint an accurate picture of expected sales. Sales teams aim to either hit their expected target or exceed it.

When the sales forecast is accurate, operations go smoothly and leaders are pleased with the follow-through on the plan. When the forecast is exceeded, the company gets to decide how it’ll invest the extra money – and everyone’s even happier. 

How do I design a sales forecasting plan?

Design a sales forecasting plan with your team by focusing on three primary activities:

• Calculating number and time period: Your plan should explain how you’ll calculate the estimated monetary amount and what the timeframes will be. 

• Reviewing and revising: You should also plan to review the forecast at key milestones and revise it if necessary. They can be monitored daily, weekly, monthly or even quarterly.

• Breaking the patterns: Even the best sales organisations need to shake up their processes once in a while. Breaking your patterns can help you find new ways of designing even more accurate forecasting. 

It’s rare for forecasts to be within 5%, but it does happen. If you’re within 5% of your forecast, and you’re dealing with a big number of opportunities, you’re a sales forecasting rockstar. 

If not, reach out to me at [email protected] and we can figure out a way to ensure you and your sales team, never struggle with Sales Forecasting again. 

Competition, indeed, drives innovation. But a crisis drives it even more.

The pandemic and new realities it created caused a lot of new sales trends to emerge. Some of them were a forced solution to last during the COVID-19 season, but a lot of them are here to stay and roll over into the near future.

We’ve witnessed a complete restructuring of sales to adjust to the new coronavirus realities. This engendered an array of new sales strategies, methods, and techniques; a lot of which have proven to be effective. Those are the ones that are likely to stay and dominate the world of sales. 

The sales world is changing, but this particular trend of outsourcing the sales function is eye-catching in the context of driving sales growth today.

The companies offering these services understand your target segments, they use big data to identify leads, they market to different segments with different offers and using different platforms, and then they match their own sales reps to individual customers based on the likelihood of converting that particular type of person. For the sales organization, it means moving to a model where your pay is based not on the service, but on the new customers being acquired. 

An outsourced sales firm is a team you hire to support you in generating prospects, nurturing leads, and moving clients through your sales pipeline. 

Outsourced sales teams build relationships for your businesses using a variety of tools, including: 

– Outbound calling: ensuring calls are made with purpose and add value. They ensure you’re connecting with the client precisely when they have the highest propensity to connect.

 – Social Selling: using platforms like LinkedIn to connect with clients and position your product/company as a problem-solver/pain point alleviator. 

– Emails: email is still the top option for communication among business professionals, and it’s a great way to nurture relationships as prospects/leads continue to consider your product. Your outsourced sales team can help you manage email outreach, generating prospects and opportunities, then moving them further down the sales pipeline and closer to signing a deal. 

Working with an outsourced sales team gives you a competitive edge because this team is solely dedicated to producing sales results. They’ll be able to work with laser focus to build your pool of prospects, then convert them into leads and sales. 

 When you manage sales in-house, your team may often have their focus diverted by competing priorities. An outsourced sales team, on the other hand, is paid to do one thing – make connections that convert. 

And, thankfully, they also have the knowledge and expertise to make that happen. A great outsourced team will comprise experienced sales professionals who have a deep understanding of making connections and building relationships. 

 The outsourced team’s sales staff will, in most cases, have spent years honing their sales skills. Because of this, they’ll be aware and ready to execute sales processes that get results. 

 Bringing on in-house sales reps can mean spending time on training them to sell, as well as getting them up to speed with your product. An outsourced sales team will already have proven sales techniques and strategies in place; they’ll just need to learn the benefits and solutions your product provides, and they’ll be able to hit the ground running. 

Does this mean we see the death of the salesperson?

Well, NO……. The salesperson will continue to be critical within the sales organization. However, there are questions as to what role he or she will play and what skills he or she will need, given that we think the human touch will remain vital to customer interactions.

While your internal team works to develop your business, a dedicated outsourced sales and marketing team will be calling on decades of expertise, experience, and sales cycle knowledge to acquire new customers to fuel that growth.

Tick, tock. Tick, tock. Tick, tock.

That’s the sound of the countdown that begins on the first day of every year, on the first day of every quarter and on the first day of each month. It’s the one aspect of sales that just never changes.

Tick, tock. Tick, tock. Tick, tock.

Sell, Sell, Sell. 

As we’ve all experienced, the sales process essentially boils down to two things: numbers and time.

And those two things often go hand-in-hand — while we and our team are racing to hit quota against that clock. But we can save time and maximize our numbers by investing in the right planning, processes, activities, and skills.

The truth is, sales is changing — quickly. As sales conversations grow even more buyer-focused, sales reps have begun developing their hacks, techniques, and processes for prospecting.

Prospecting allows you to identify good-fit customers for your business. This means finding leads who truly need your product or service to solve their challenges and pain points.

As a professional sales leader for the last 32 years, I am astounded to see how many of sales reps do not have a well-developed customer list or any customer list at all. It’s a shame. It is like going to the battlefield unarmed, with no plans what so ever…to face defeat and humiliation.

Customer lists vary greatly from company to company and what information you track about your customers will be different depending on your priorities.

With that said, there are at least 4 types of data that every customer list should contain.

1. Your Customer’s Name
2. Your Customer’s Address
3. Your Customer’s Mobile Number
4. Your Customer’s Email Address

Make the time to collect this complete set of data and watch your business grow exponentially.

GOlD MINE

An accurate and complete customer list could be a goldmine for you as well as your company. It provides leads for sales and focus groups for testing new products. This list should be updated regularly so that it remains current and as effective as possible. Staying on top of your client and customer list can help you more than you initially realise. Some benefits of a customer list besides reaching out to new customers, include the following:

• You can use your customer list to provide information about new products to previous customers. You could build anticipation for the product by reaching out before it goes on sale and by detailing why your new product could provide additional benefits, even to previous customers.
• Similarly, these lists provide the opportunity for you to find sales leads from those who have already purchased from your company. Even if you do not have a new product hitting the market, you may have the ability to market already existing products or services that a previous customer may need but did not purchase before.
• The customer database stores information like personal details, buying habits, last interaction with the firm, contact information etc. Such databases help the firms to understand the customers buying pattern which is used to design products and decide on prices.

No matter the industry you work within, the demographics of your target market, or the kinds of goods/services you provide, you know that collecting data about your customers helps you to improve nearly every aspect of your business.

Data Provides a Deeper Understanding of Your Market

How To Prospect? 

Unproductive prospecting is a huge time-waster.

1. Research:

Effective prospecting begins by further researching the prospects whom we’ve determined are generally a good fit. Our goal during this phase is to determine the quality of the prospect.

Research the prospect on following parameters:

*GOALS: Determine the prospect’s quantitative goals.

*PLANS: Find out what the prospect has done in the past and what they plan to achieve their goals.

*CHALLENGES: Define prospect’s pain points and whether you have resources to tackle this issue.

*TIMELINE: Assess whether the prospect wants to buy now or in the near future.

*BUDGET: Evaluate whether the prospect has enough cash to close the deal.

*AUTHORITY: If our contact is not the buyer, we need to get the decision maker on board.

2. Prioritize:

Prioritizing our prospects can save us time and ensure we’re dedicating our strongest efforts to prospects that are most likely to become customers.

3. Classify prospects with ratings:

Qualitatively classify prospects by rating them on a spectrum from high, medium, and low suitability.

Remember, your market context is not static. It keeps on changing and is very dynamic in nature. Continuous understanding of your market requires continuous scanning of the market. So, you are required to update your customer list on a regular basis. When you are prepared with an updated customer list, it will give you a greater understanding about the opportunities that exist.

Sales people that win are well planned and the man who is prepared and has planned well has his battle half won. Proper planning prepares you towards your targets and give you a direction. A thoughtfully planned customer list will give you more confidence when you make calls and lead you to the road to success.

“IF YOU DO NOT PREPARE OR PLAN TO SUCCEED, YOU ARE PLANNING TO FAIL.”

Building material industry which has been struggling over the past 3-4 years would possibly witness further deceleration with construction and renovation demand likely to shrink in the near term and would now need to cope with the COVID-19 impact.

CONSTRAINTS POST LOCKDOWN

• Like many others, the construction sector, too, is reeling under the impact of coronavirus pandemic. There has been a   complete halt in construction activities during lockdown and will take some time to resume work.
• There has been severe working capital pressure.
• Projects in cities have come to a complete standstill although some activities have started in far-flung areas.
• Damage to order inflows-short term or extended bearing is a question mark.
• Covid-19 followed by rains may lead to a sluggish market in Building Material Industry which may extend to another 6 months.
• Labour supply remains a big challenge for the sector.
• Commercial vehicle movement and availability decline is also deepening.
• The next two quarters shall be very challenging. Recovery in FY 21 will be slow. Demand (short term & long term) shall go down.
• Demand will also get affected as Customer’s income will go down.
• Customer would hesitate to go to the market due to hygiene issues or social distancing.

OPPORTUNITIES

Hope for the ‘BEST’; prepare for the ‘WORST’- start beginning to look beyond the crisis seems to be the mantra.

• Every big crisis is a test of leadership. The different type of traits will have to be demonstrated:
  • keep calm, retain your confidence
  • relentlessly communicate with your people, make them       comfortable, actively collaborate with your partners, reach out to the fraternity, be compassionate.
• Be focussed on ‘CASH FLOW’. Liquidity and Cash would be the determinants as to who survives and who doesn’t- “TOP LINE IS VANITY, BOTTOM LINE IS SANITY, BUT CASH FLOW IS REALITY”.
• Government has postponed all collectables including paying GST upfront when you raise an invoice and even loan repayments.
• Routine and mono-skilled roles will be replaced with specialists and multi-disciplined roles.
• Skills like creativity, empathy, collaboration will be in prominence.
• Demand will be divided into “MUST HAVE” & “GOOD TO HAVE”. Luxury buying will take a back seat.
• This crisis has pushed the mankind from the comfort zone to a zone of discomfort. Fear of unknown is changing us and fear is a very good attribute. It’s a driver for us to deploy the best that we have.
• Market will move towards digitalization and e-commerce.
• The crisis has accelerated adaptation of technology at work. Faster computing power, connected devices, cloud, zoom, are redefining the man-machine interface. Digitisation at work place has changed the work culture.

WAYS OF GETTING BACK TO NORMALCY

1. Re-emphasize on consultative selling. Do not sell a product- sell solutions, sell services.
2. Product innovation (germ-free tiles & sanitaryware), Partnership & Collaboration will be a key to be successful. Companies are evolving more towards a one-stop shop solution.
3. Cost cutting.  
4. Reducing wasteful inventories leading to increased liquidity.
5. Less Credits.
6. Dealers to reduce brands and avoid over trading.
7.  Dealers to focus on weekly purchasing and not on month-end sale.
8.  Focus on cash-flow.
9. Tier 3, 4 & 5 towns will bounce back rapidly.
10. Sectors to focus upon in the following order:
11. residential/ Government residential
    1. small projects are already on and would be the first one in the list to pick up.
    2. large projects would pick up slowly.
    3. hospitality should be the last to focus upon.

12. Apart from learning new skills, stay with your core     strengths.
13. Reduce risks & liabilities. 
14. Hygiene would be an important factor.

GOVERNMENT INITIATIVES

Following Government initiatives would go a long way to help building material industry arrest the decline: 

1. Housing for all
2. Swachh Bharat Mission
3. Smart cities
4. Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana
5. Atal Mission for rejuvenation and Urbanisation
6. RERA

Regardless of whether the building material industry moves into a new normal or reverts to the old normal, companies must act now and take the crisis as an opportunity to actively shape the future of the industry.

COVID 19 and the resultant lockdown is not an end of the world. It’s just a crisis, a setback. It is just a halt in the march of the human being, and the mankind. This crisis would differentiate mankind into winners and losers.