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Stressed out about sales forecasting?

Guest post by: Debbie Robinson

Article Overview: Providing a solid, reliable forecast will build your confidence and your credibility and is a fundamental part of being a successful sales professional.

Stressed out about sales forecasting?

Do you fill your sales pipeline with suspects rather than prospects hoping to convince yourself and your sales manager that all will come right in the end? Who are you kidding? This sort of wishing and hoping is stressful and energy sapping.

Month after month the same "opportunity" sits in your pipeline. Each time you have a review meeting with your sales manager you come up with reasons why it has not progressed or closed. "The decision maker is away on business" "The board meeting has been delayed"...excuses excuses!

It doesn't have to be this way. Providing a solid, reliable forecast will build your confidence and your credibility and is a fundamental part of being a successful sales professional.

You want to improve your ability and reduce your stress levels, so what's preventing you from forecasting accurately and consistently? Let's try and find out why.

• How do you specifically utilise the sales process that your company has implemented?
• What areas, if any, do you skip?
• What is it that causes you to omit these steps?
• What evidence do you have that it's ok to omit these steps?
• What do you need to do to build your competence in mastering these steps?
• Where can you get help from?
• What else could you do?
• What will prevent you from getting help?
• How will you over come this?
• What are the consequences of not improving?
• What are the benefits of improving?
• How will you feel when your forecasting improves?
• Who within your sales team forecasts well?
• What is it that they do specifically?
• What can you learn from them?
• What one thing could you do to improve your forecasting ability?
• What's stopping you from doing it now?
• When will you take action?

Making excuses for poor sales forecasting is avoiding personal responsibility. Firstly, become aware of what you do and how you approach it. Decide what it is you need to do to improve, then take control and DO IT!

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  Questions Every CEO Should Be Asking His Sales Managers
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  Don’t Worry Be Happy!

Article Tags: confidence, credibility, sales professional, successful sales
Referred by: http://www.dcjaconsultancy.com



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