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forecast funnel pipeline

A collection of 219 issues

What's a True Gateway?

Those in Sales Operations love to talk about gateways. They’re pretty fundamental to a winning sales process. In simple terms, a sales gateway signifies when you progress from one stage in your campaign to the next. They are important to sales ops types because many sales reporting systems are

Cook The Lame Duck

I had an email chat the other day with a recently promoted, and highly promising, sales manager. They as a team are going through a typical re-alignment. From open season to focused verticals in their case. I’ve seen this plenty of times. Reps are loathed give up on prospects

One Significant Figure

I was reminded the other day about my attitude to financial deal size. In their baby steps most cubreps I guess could easily get distracted by the “whale of a deal” on their forecast. It’s an affliction that can strangle many a more experienced salesperson too. I remember when

Thinking Report

Being five hours behind in New York, I caught an item on BBC Radio 5 I would never normally catch. Su Chang eloquently dissected how Beijing Uni is sending students for internet cessation [http://efcoffeeroom.blogspot.com/2012/05/beijing-university-is-to-relaunch.html] classes. By pure fluke, the package on Radio 4

Happiness Results In

Well. GDP and all those other economic indicators are yesterday’s irrelevance, right? A year ago I blogged [https://salespodder.com/happiness-oh-happiness/] on how the UK sought to get to grips with this by surveying the nation’s contentment. It struck me at the time how rarely we seek to

Bad Payer Cull

I cam across this fascinating occurrence courtesy of a decently sized accountancy practice. They had begun to suffer a growing debtors book. Lots of people owed them money. And this uncollected cash pile was getting worryingly larger. With only one admin person that could chase the bills, those that conducted

Grading Opportunities

With the season of stuffing now past, I’ve read a slew of articles recently on the battles people have with over-indulgence. It is eye watering that one in four people in my homeland are currently considered obese. One such article quoted celebrity high-protein diet creator, Frenchman Pierre Dukan, as

Black Swan Stress Test

I read the book that introduced this phrase a couple of years [http://salespodder.com/the-black-swan/] back. So was intrigued to find an article from HBR in September 2011 (by Flyvbjerg & Budzier) evoking the concept in the context of (IT) project success. If you sell in the tech space,

Account Manager Genie

There are some pretty awkward meetings account management can throw your way. Each nasty scenario will be well known to higher management and will come with a positive counter. For instance, when summoned to be told that your company’s provision is so bad that your supply is no longer

Hopeium

I came across a cracking portmanteau today. Meld Hope with Opium and you get Hopeium (or if you prefer, Hopium). It is not evidently a neologism used on the street in a positive manner. It crops up as a way of knocking what someone is thinking, generally questioning their mental