Forecasting Pipeline: Mirage or Real

In its role as the bridge between the customer's needs and the products or services the business offers, sales play a pivotal role in the success of any business.  However, predicting your sales is not a walk in the park. It is difficult to forecast the revenue that your business will generate over a given period of time due to the different elements and varying conversion rates throughout the sales funnel.   Even more so, the lack of accountability by sales people, sandbagging behavior in forecasting, and management failure to get involved are the barriers to effective sales forecasting.   The most important aspects to forecasting: Honestly Truth   In today's episode of the ACCESS Points Podcast, Tim and Davin will talk about sales pipelines and how the leadership team at ACCESS EFM calculates the numbers in their pipeline. They will also dig deeper into why accountability, discipline, and trust are the building blocks of every organization's sales system.   In This Episode 1:32 - How ACCESS came up with the numbers in their pipeline   7:08 - Tim's perspective on the value of forecasts   9:46 - Why business leaders need to be involved in lead generation processes   17:33 - The flaw behind the quantity approach to sales   Favorite Quotes "The most important thing to forecasting is honesty and truth. There's nothing that can wipe out forecasting any faster or any worse than not being honest and not being truthful. You can only work with what you know is to be true." - Tim   "Nothing's changed in sales since the 1900's as far as the way things work. It's a big funnel and you've got to put a lot in the top to get a little out of the bottom. Not everything that you put into the top is going to come out in the bottom." - Tim   "Pipeline is incredibly important in closing business. Obviously, cash is king. We use the pipeline to get to that number. But there's so much more that goes into it, so much more that results from an accurate pipeline." - Davin   "Nothing's worse for me than an untrustworthy pipeline or forecast." - Tim   "We don't want to micromanage. But at the same time, it's really important for your sales group that you're completely involved in the process and you're involved in some way on every sale." - Tim   "As an entrepreneur, as an owner, as an operator, we just need the truth. And if I know the truth, I can work with the truth and we can't fix things if we don't know what the truth is." - Tim   "When you're in a business especially B2B and when things don't close overnight, you have to have continuity and you have to have consistency. And most importantly, you have to have clarity and actual numbers to that pipeline." - Davin   Visit Access EFM: Website Facebook LinkedIn Twitter   Click here to listen with Access Points Podcast