When you’re looking to get started with sales performance management software, one building block is crucial to its success: a clear and accurate sales forecast. Setting well-defined objectives and sharing them with your sales team is an essential first step in motivating your salespeople to help reach your company’s goals.
Intuitive vs. data-driven forecasting
All too often, sales forecasts have traditionally been informed by gut feelings as opposed to hard data. And sure, a salesperson who has great relationships with their customers and a deep-seated knowledge of their industry and market might find that their intuition has an important part to play.
But while this kind of expertise shouldn’t necessarily be ignored, it’s sales intelligence software that will deliver the objective, accurate forecast your business needs to align performance with company goals. It’s hard to argue with the data, and when you build a plan around easy-to-visualize analytics and measurable results, you’ll find it easier to get everyone in the business on board and to keep your sales team engaged and motivated.
Sales intelligence software: the tools
If you’re using your sales performance management software just to calculate compensation payments, you’re missing out on a powerful planning tool. Here’s how systems with advanced analytics can help.
- Product trending dashboards: Giving visibility of product sales in real time, these easy-to-read dashboards will help you set better quotas and spot emerging opportunities ahead of your competitors.
- What-if analysis: Sales intelligence software allows you to model different compensation scenarios based on a number of factors such as attainment, sales and goals. By having visibility of all the possible outcomes, you’ll be able to tweak your strategy as you go along for a more accurate compensation forecast.
- Geographic and territory-based dashboard: See detailed information on how your team is performing to help identify trends and potential problems.
Benefits of sales performance management software
In today’s fast-paced sales environment, it’s just not possible to measure performance and track the market using legacy systems based around spreadsheets. Sales performance management software will arm you with the insights you need to build an accurate strategy and react quickly to any changes.
- A software platform generates actionable insights instantly, allowing you to fine-tune your plan as you go so that you can align performance with your sales forecasts.
- Powerful software lets you drill down into sales performance in granular detail, giving visibility of how your salespeople are performing at every level. By spotting any potential problems quickly, you’ll be able to help your team develop the skills they need and maximize their performance.
- With a robust sales forecast that’s continually updated to reflect actual performance, you’ll be able to build a financial plan with confidence, and head off any nasty end-of-year surprises.
- When you ditch the tangle of spreadsheets for an integrated sales intelligence software solution, you can start to zoom in on the areas of the sales strategy that often get lost or neglected.
- Retaining customers
- Upselling and cross-selling of additional products
- Exploring vertical markets that may represent a ripe strategic opportunity
Conclusion
A motivated sales force starts with a clear business plan that everyone can get behind. By harnessing sales intelligence software, you’ll be able to build out a strategy with the most up-to-date information on your side.
