Salesforce is an amazing cloud-based CRM platform. It has a huge fan base and the biggest number of users across the world. Businesses across the globe are leveraging the strong capabilities of Salesforce consulting services.
The CRM system is equipped with multiple advanced features and functionalities. One of the most prominent ones is that it is backed by powerful Artificial Intelligence technology, which enables businesses and business users in predicting sales and future strategies.
With the help of Salesforce consulting services, a sales manager can easily get the answers to the two most prominent questions that streamline the sales forecasting process and it is, how much do we plan to sell, and when will we deliver the planned numbers?
In this post, we will discuss Salesforce forecasting techniques that will help businesses address the forecasting challenges in a well-planned manner.
Before we move ahead, let’s briefly understand what is Sales forecasting and why sales forecasting is important?
Process of Estimating Future Sales Revenue Within Specific Time Frame is Sales Forecasting
Listed as one of the pivotal steps in every business process, Sales forecasting helps users fuel the sales planning and streamline the staffing, revenue-generating, lead flow, and budgeting process as well.
Through a proper sales forecasting process, a business can plan to sell its goods and/or services within a certain time period. A well-planned sales forecasting helps businesses get answers to the two most important questions that are, How Much and When?
For every sales strategy, there is a certain number that every business decides to achieve. To achieve this number a business takes into consideration everything that is related to their prospects.
Here comes Salesforce into the picture. With the proper guidance of a Salesforce consulting company, a business can easily garner all sales-centric factors that will help them decide on how much amount they will have to achieve during a particular period of time.
Another question in Sales forecasting is, when? It helps a business decide to determine the timeframe within which it has to achieve the desired sales numbers, for e.g. monthly target, quarter targets, or yearly target.
Why is Sales Forecasting Essential for Business Growth?
A good, well-strategized, and accurate sales forecasting is the foundation of any business success. It helps a business make smarter & robust decisions that will ultimately improve sales and revenue growth.
An accurate sales forecasting can be achieved with the help of a certified Salesforce consultant, who can help business users understand cloud CRM. It will enable businesses to get a fine idea of the budget and help detect potential threats before it’s too late.
Hire Salesforce consulting company and you can enjoy the amazing process of Sales forecasting. Here are some of the best factors that will tell you why Sales forecasting will be helpful to your business growth:
It Helps Estimate Future Revenue – Businesses can learn about their future revenue generation through accurate forecasting of sales, quarterly, half-yearly, and yearly.
It Improvises Resource Allocation – A well-planned sales forecasting also helps businesses in managing their internal resources such as cash flow, human force, sales team, etc. In this way, businesses can learn about the forthcoming challenges, and they can prepare themselves to deal with those challenges in advance.
It Strengthen Growth Strategy – Give your sales strategies a boost with Sales forecasting. Businesses can prepare themselves to address all spontaneous roadblocks and opportunities with the help of proper sales forecasting. Through proper sales forecasting, businesses can also spend, invest, and hire the right resources at the right time.
There are many other important factors that will help you understand why sales forecasting is important for business & sales growth. You can leverage all the importance through Salesforce consulting services.
Best Sales Forecasting Techniques for Business & Sales Growth
Salesforce is an advanced data garnering CRM that consolidates data from different sources in one place and gives business users a complete 360-degree view of customers.
Salesforce CRM implementation & integration services help you make precise sales forecasting. Here are the best sales forecasting techniques:
Qualitative Techniques
If you have small or limited data then the qualitative technique would be the perfect choice for you. It majorly comes in handy when a business launches any new product, where data is limited to forecast anything.
The major objective of this method brings all the judgements & data about the factors to be estimated in a logical and systematic manner.
Qualitative techniques include sub techniques that are as follows –
- Delphi method – A process that includes surveys and questionnaires to forecast future sales.
- Salesforce composite technique – In here the company asks its sales team to make sales forecasts as they are in direct contact with them and have better information about demand.
- Buyer’s expectations – Here, the business surveys the buying intentions and the market intents.
Time Series Analysis
This technique of sales forecasting is useful at a time when you have years of data available to you about a product. The time series analysis sales forecasting technique proves to be useful when businesses have stable products and have clear trends & relationships.
Through this technique, the team can analyse the past data and analyze the current performance rate & the change in rate. Through this sales forecasting technique, you can identify the trends in the data along with the cyclical performance patterns that occur every two-three years.
It will also be easy for the businesses to learn the growth rates of different trends in the data.
Casual Models
The casual sales forecasting method also comes in handy when businesses have enough past data of the product or services for which they wish to forecast sales.
It is one of the most sophisticated sales forecasting models that depict casual relationships including market survey information and other factors.
The historical data here is properly analyzed considering all the factors which will be pivotal for the sales forecast.
Negative Forecasting
Another sales forecasting technique is negative forecasting. It is one of the best ways where businesses can assess current risk. It will help the sales team expedite their deals and the company can easily track the lost deals.
Five Steps Forecasting Question Techniques
According to Andy Kofoid, an industry veteran with 20+ years of experience, sales forecasting techniques also include asking oneself five questions that will lead toward predictable revenue and accurate actionable data.
Here are the important five questions suggested by Kofoid that will help the sales team concentrate on building strong forecasting:
Who? It tells that the sales team should predict the sales forecast as per their prospects.
What? Through this question, one should analyze what one solution you plan to sell and what uniqueness it has that your company can exclusively solve.
Where? It is another factor that affects sales forecasting. It tells at which location the customers are making their buying decision. It also helps analyze the place where the demand for the product is more.
Why? Analyze why your customers (present or prospective) are considering new services?
How? And the last one is how that helps the sales team determine how the prospect will make the purchase decision?
Conclusion
Sales forecasting is an essential process. Businesses can predict their survival through accurate sales forecasting. In this post, we have tried to cover all major sales forecasting techniques through which you can predict the sales and growth of your business accurately.
You can also hire a Salesforce consulting company or a certified Salesforce consultant that will help you leverage the CRM platform to its fullest and you can excellently make sales forecasting.
