Somehow it seems to come down to this more often than we like. We've had an entire year to make our numbers but, going into the last quarter, we are behind. Now it's crunch time - what does the CSO do?
October brings a reminder of the "fourth quarter two-minute drill". Any football team that has a shot at winning the game and is behind in the final two minutes goes into the two-minute drill.
Is that you?
Does it look like you'll make the numbers by the end of the year?
As a CSO, sales manager or sales professional, that can be one of the most challenging questions of the year. It's challenging because some - or even most - of your compensation is riding on your making the numbers.
If you're not on track to make the numbers, you have two options:
- Find some new sales opportunities
- Increase the likelihood that you will close the accounts you have already identified
Which one is best for your situation?
When asked, most executives respond with option one: find some new accounts. In fact, the best option more than 70% of the time is option two. In the past few weeks we have been contacted by several organizations looking for help in making their year-end numbers. In almost every case the answer was to immediately improve sales effectiveness, not to find new sales.
This is not conjecture. We use a sales analytics process based on two tools:
- Probability of Sale Calculator
- Monte Carlo simulations from Crystal Ball, an Oracle software product
We use these three factors in our calculations:
- Value of each pending opportunity
- Probability of sale for each one and,
- Whether or not the sale closes
These tools allow us to run more than 1,000 what-if scenarios in less than three seconds! The results are often surprising. Once armed with the results, an action plan needs to be developed and implemented. That action plan becomes a two-minute drill.
I can help. If you would like to run your pipeline through the analytics, either use Oracle Crystal Ball or contact me and I will do it for you. Then, if it appears your likelihood of making your numbers is not where you want it to be, I will come and help your team with sales development, Kaizen for Sales, an autopsy of your sales process or whatever else it takes.
The clock is ticking.
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