Depending on your sales organization, you may or may not be heavily involved with the official forecasting process. The most optimal forecast process involves the rep working collaboratively with the SE and any other sales team member (e.g. inside rep) to set the forecast. At the end of the day the reps need to have final say as they are the ones directly responsible for quota attainment. The forecast process should be well defined with as little subjectivity as possible. This leads to a far more amicable relationship with sales management. If this is how it works at your company, I would be impressed, as this seems to be a small minority of sales departments.
To me there are three essential ingredients to a successful forecast:
1) Trust – If the sales team does not trust that they can be open and honest with sales management—or will be penalized in any way for doing so—the data input into the process will reflect it. In other words, we’ll lie.
2) Process – If forecasting in your company is an art and not science, the forecast, in aggregate, will have high variance. Just ask your CEO/CTO or stockholders what they think of variance in financial data.
3) Communication – If the person entering the data does not have a complete picture of the opportunity, the forecast will be made based on false assumptions.
At the sales management level, you will have varying influence on all three. Since this focus in on the SE, let’s spend some time on what we have some control over, which is communication. Since you’ve read this far, I’m hoping you already inherently see the benefit of working with your rep to ensure the forecast is as accurate as possible. I can think of a couple tangible benefits:
- Sales teams that have a high degree of forecasting accuracy are (rightfully) seen as having a better handle on the business. This gets folks higher pay and more promotions.
- Management tends to leave you alone and allow you more leeway in your daily routine and with potentially more perks.
- If you really like your rep, it helps ensure they stay around. If they are seen as senior people, they also may get more influence on account selection.
Sales managers are primarily judged on quota attainment, but that is an incomplete statement. Consider manager A that over the course of 3 years comes in at 70%, 140%, and 90% of forecast versus manager B that comes in at 90%, 92%, and 91%. A averages 100% while B averages 91%.
If I was the VP of Sales, I would prefer manager B other things being equal. Why? I’d sleep better at night. What would scare me with A is that I don’t know if we’re feast or famine. I would be spending a lot of time with A in coaching and micro management sessions. If I had the chance, I would promote B to watch over and help the As.
This example is why you can reap benefits helping your rep be as accurate as they can be. Now, I’m not a fan of blaming problems on the “communication” scapegoat. Far too many things can be loosely tied to poor communication to make it very useful for us. So here are some tactical examples of things we can do improve accuracy.
Sales Process
Use the chosen sales technology/process at your company mercilessly. It’s a huge pain in the ass, but long term, forcing your team to use the established guidelines prods you to use the same diction. It also subconsciously forces you to begin thinking the same way. If everyone is always keeping their eye out for the “technical decision maker,” “key product champion,” “sponsor,” etc. you will find that everyone begins to navigate the sales process in similar fashion. What you are essentially doing is adding more rigid process to the sales cycle which improves forecast accuracy.
Continuous Review
After every meet and greet, presentation, demonstration, etc. spend 5 minutes after the event breaking down the meeting with your rep. Talk about what went right, what went wrong, next steps, and generally work toward making sure what both of you heard from the customer is consistent. If there is ambiguity, address it in your follow up communications with the customer. What you’re doing in creating a habit of having micro dialogues that help keep you in sync. Trying to do this in email after the fact is a sure way of ensuring it never gets looked at. You can reinforce with writing (especially since you’ll want to do it anyway for your sales tool), but get in the habit of doing it in person right after the fact. Quarterly Business Reviews (QBRs) are fine, just make sure they happen in addition to frequent dialogue
Learn the Process
In most companies forecast reviews are not pleasurable experiences. It involves reps saying the least amount of words possible that allows them to leave the meeting without two black eyes from the sales manager (one is acceptable). Most of the time SEs are not required attendees. Most reps do not even want their SEs present to remove the possibility of providing the sales manager with conflicting data. Even still, you need to go to a few of them. The purpose is nothing more than to become as familiar with the forecasting process as your rep. Even if your reps dislike you for doing it initially, they should at least respect you. This is other side of the coin in terms of the sales process. Common terms, common process, and common experience should equal better and more effective communication.
For the SE Managers out there, it is your job to help your SEs see the benefit of becoming active in the forecast process. It’s not necessarily intuitive even for many senior SEs. Spend some time during your next meeting going over some best practices. Even better, invite a sales manager or director to deliver a talk about the importance of this process from their perspective. Most folks don’t know what happens to the forecast after it goes to the sales manager, so it could be quite an eye-opening experience to see the process end-to-end.
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