Sales Forecasting
I have to tell a short story here. Yesterday, when I was young, I would go to trade shows. I would go to the break out meetings to learn. Learning to me is always key. I picked this up at IBM. The great company trained non-stop, always providing a full menu of classes which I could attend at any time.
Back to Arizona, a hot few days at an Electronics tradeshow. I went to a breakout meeting at the show held by a large OEM that made electronic components. This company, a multi channel sales model, passed leads or sample requests to a net of reps with pass through to distributors. A small direct force manage the tier 1 accounts. Many parts of the salesforce were sitting in this breakout. Current reps for the OEM and reps that were being recruited to heft the line.
A fella sitting next to me politely raised his hand and asked about Forecasts. What forecast tools and metrics were being used to help customer service levels and to plan the sales strategy and sales approach. This question was asked of the SVP of Sales at this billion USD pass thru OEM, maker of electronic stuff.
He look puzzled, appeared confused with this silly question. The puzzled look screwed into a commited look and a retort. “The forecast is always wrong, we dont pay much attention to that.”
I just could not stifle my mouth and blurted out, ” Well how do you try to get forecast data?”
“We get spreadsheet roll ups from our reps 2x per year and work with these numbers.”
OK, no wonder your forecast is always wrong. This fellas was setting his company up to feel the lash of the supply chain bullwhip which tortured the electronics industry only a handful of years before.
There is a better way and a simple way not only to get forecast data clean and accurate, but to get this forecast data from the multi mode sales channel.
One Comment
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