Topic

forecast funnel pipeline

A collection of 214 issues

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

Urgency Algorithm

There’s an American research team that can predict injuries suffered in a car crash. They do so seeing only the state of the crumpled wreck. This isn’t just impressive for a party trick. It hugely saves lives. When one of the team used to arrive at crash scenes,

Most Revealing Sales Stats

Here’s the meat on a mailshot promoting a September seminar sponsored by a mindmap software house. The figures are credited to a CSO Insights survey on 2009 performance. > The percentage of salespeople making quota dropped from 58.8% to 51.5% last year. Despite this drop, 85% of

What's Your Top-Line Indicator?

A thoroughly enjoyable meeting at a client the other day uncovered a remarkably simple approach to funnel management. Selling a combination of fairly big-ticket items (mixing ‘hardware’ & ‘software’), the typical account manager monthly revenue target is 50k. Whilst obviously the main figure, there are two other numbers of prominence.

Internal Design Trio

I’ve been away from the internet for what seems like an eternity these past few days, so when I caught up on a bit of light sales-related reading relaxation, was surprised to read three articles in a row that all had resonance with internal salesteam politics. Firstly, I came

Another Forecast Spreadsheet

One of my customers shared with me the parallel reporting that has since resoundingly taken the place of their ditched Goldmine crm. It’s a single worksheet they call the Schiffman Board. It seems that with usage of Goldmine having tailed off to practically no use at all, a new