While participating in a sales forecast, it is crucial for you to answer after considering both the corporate and the departmental viewpoints that may arise. This will provide the real balance between the expectations of the management and the real-case scenarios that different departments project.

External factors have a very significant role to play in Sales Forecasting. This is mainly because they are not dependent on the organizations’ functioning; the organization is dependent on theirs. The most influential factor is the competition, where the competition stands in terms of market share, new line of products, recognition of brand, expansion or contraction of the sales force, etc. Also, whether there is a new competitor in the market or if any competitor is losing out in business.

There are numerous instances where two financially unsound companies enter into Mergers and Acquisitions. Often, these companies form a strong partnership and emerge as a challenging competitor. Managers need to check whether any of their competitors are involved in any such mergers or acquisitions, and if they are, then what is their collective strength and which minuses of each other they are cancelling out.

Generating Sales Reports

Generating sales reports is one of the wisest ways of measuring the progress of your sales team staffs. It also comes in handy for your sales team while making productive changes along the way. Anyway, the days of huge sales reports with detailed information are long gone.

In the real world, salespeople dedicate very less time towards analysing sales reports, which could be as less as thirty minutes a week. More over, by the reduction of unnecessary paperwork, the salespeople can dedicate the saved time for selling.

Some important areas to consider while making reports are the current position of the business deal in the sales cycle whether a proposal has been requested, prototypes or demos have been asked for, etc.

It is also necessary to calculate the amount of time a prospect is within an agreement with a competitor (date up to which the contract is needed to be renewed or expired) and finally, the growth rate of ongoing prospects (updates against quota).

Contact Log

This is a different kind of report that the salesperson maintains and it can be reviewed by clients on a regular basis. This keeps detailed updates on the current status of contacting the clients. Some updates can be as ‘first contact made’, ‘upcoming call appointment made’, ‘personal sales call appointment made’, etc.

There are some specifications which are followed because just initiating a large number of phone calls or sending a lot of e-mails or business letters does not comply with SMART principles and might just consume your precious time.

Clients are well-informed people, so it is necessary for you to have an understanding of the role played by others within the company and how the internal stakeholders will participate in forecasting of the sales business. Every call to a client should try to get information on the following areas –

• What are the new products and in which development phase are they (R&D, engineering, etc.)?

• What marketing agendas are being implemented for the promotion of demand?

• Is there an increase/decrease anticipated in the marketing budget, if so, how much?

• How financially stable is the business? What do financial executives suggest?

•What amount of human resource is required for the progress?

• What are the recruitment circumstances of the company (whether hiring new recruits or on hold, etc.)?

Finally, all the information collected needs to be sent to the management. It is crucial for you to be realistic. The important point here is that you should try to have as much say and support as possible when making a forecast. This will enable all parties to get details and information necessary for them to satisfy their prominent constituents. stakeholders and various Balancing Prospects Time and Managing time in Sales Forecasting is very different from that in other tasks.

It is simply because it deals in a very dynamic process, so the various tools and techniques that sales managers have in their arsenal will be quite different than other managers. The reason behind that is they have to deal in daily prospects – sharing and number-delivering.

The factors that influence your time are

• Demands made by the senior management of the Corporate.

• Demands made by your manager.

• Demands made by your sales team.

• Demands made by other departments.

• Demands made by your customers.

• Demands made by your family and friends.

• Other private demands.

You can easily conclude that all the above factors are built upon various demands of different people that eat into your productive time. However, by looking at them from a different point of view with respect to what others demand from and what you demand from yourself, you could be able to save some time. If you have a look at the effects these demands have on your time, you will notice that it is the customer- centric values that come into play here. Something that is valuable to you might not be as valuable to somebody else. Normally, the term “value” indicates your perception and if it is right or wrong from your point of view.

A good practice would be to come up with a simple personal strategy for yourself. The depth of the details you go in individual fields is entirely your choice. This may seem like a very basic exercise, still it will put into words some of the thoughts you have been contemplating.

This may encircle areas such as

• What is your sales forecast today?

• Where do you see it in the next six months, three years, six years, etc.?

You could divide the categories into immediate, inter-mediate, quarterly, bi-annually, annually, etc. Again, you will be astonished to know how change can take place over time due to age and situations. So, you should see through this on a regular basis. The moment you would have a better command over the value you associate with time and its management, you would be able to come up with ways to manage time better.

Functions of Sales executives

Many sales executives get promoted into their positions because of their previous performances as salespersons. In some companies, outstanding sales persons have in inside track when sales executive’s jobs are being filled. The assumption is that outstanding salespersons will be outstanding sales executives. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The sales executive’s job demands administrative skills much beyond those required of salespeople. Personal selling experience is not unimportant, as sales executives manage people who do personal selling. But personal selling experience and outstanding personal selling performance are two different things most companies can recount instances where an outstanding salesperson failed in a sales executive’s job.

The sales executive’s planning function includes those connected with the sale program. The sales organization and its control. The sales executive is responsible for setting personal selling goals, for developing sales programs designed to achieve these goals, for formulating sales policies and personal selling strategies, and for putting together plans for their implementation.

Sales programs are put into effect through the sale organization, and the sales executive is responsible for designing and shaping the sales organization, for staffing it, for developing the skills of those who are part of it, and for providing leadership to it. Achievement of sales departmental goals requires controls over selling activities, sales volume, selling expenses, and the like. The sale executive is responsible for these and related control activities. Basically, the sales executive has two sets of function: operating and planning. The operating Functions include sales force management, handling relationships with personnel in other company departments and with the trade (middlemen and /or customers), communicating and coordinating with other marketing executives, and reporting to some superior executive (such as the marketing vice president). In addition, in some companies and fairly commonly in lower level sales executive sells some accounts personally (to keep a “hand in ” and to keep abreast of current selling problems and conditions).

The amount of sales executive’s time devoted to planning and operating functions is influenced by size of the sales organization. Sales executives in small companies spend less time on planning and more on operating. As the size of the company increases, the sales executive devotes more time to planning and less to operating. Exerting important influences on the way sales executives distribute their time and effort, too, is the type of supervisory organization. When the sales executive supervises the field sales force directly, he or she spends most of the time on operating function. When the sales executive supervises the field sales force through subordinate sales executives, more attention is devote to planning and less to operating. Sales executives who have high caliber subordinates generally are more willing to delegate most of the performance of the operating functions to them and, consequently, have time left for planning. The relative emphasis that sales executives give to the operating and planning functions varies with

(1) Type of products

(2) Size of company

(3) Type of supervisory organization.

Customarily, sales executives at all organizational levels devote more time and attention to sales force management than they do to any other single activity. The significance attached to operating and planning functions varies with the product. If the product is a consumer good, sales executives attach the greatest importance to planning function: development of sales programs, coordination of personal selling with advertisings, and building and maintaining relationships with dealers and customers. If the product is an industrial good, sales executives attach the greatest importance to the operating function managing and directing the sales force, making calls with salespeople, and selling personal account. Consumer goods sales managers, in general, spend more time on planning and less on operating than do their counterparts in industrial goods companies.