Jul

28

Business that don’t use sales forecasting always fail

Filed Under Internet Marketing 

sales forecasting software

More than 50% of businesses don’t survive more than 5 years. If you closely examine government figures you will see the evidence

The gurus propose the reason for this tragedy is the failures eventually ran out of cash. This explanation is of no value and so I decided to track down people directly and indirectly connected with failed businesses to see if I could uncover the details, establish any recurring reasons for failure and present them on the web in the hope that my discoveries would help others avoid a similar fate. I discovered eight common reasons for business death. Here are three of them:

No Vision, mission or strategy

“If you haven’t a clue where you are going then how are you going to get there?” You have to have a clear illustration of what you want to achieve and how life will be for your business if you achieve it. To achieve anything you must have a strategy. Strategy is like a road map it shows you how to get to your destination. It’s a systematic list of actions. Strategy is only effective if it is translated into a business plan which can be used as a benchmark for business performance. A key instrument for tracking and measuring business perfomance is the sales forecast.

Lack of a system for marketing or sales

Marketing is about exploring markets and testing strategies to position your proposition in the minds of prospects and drawing them into your sales funnel. Sales is about engaging the prospect and getting them to buy your product or service. Marketing is a process of measuring and improvement of the ways you use to engage prospects. selling is the process of creating leads, forecasting sales and closing business. In well run companies a good marketing and sales system is often supported by a effective sales forecasting software system. The tools in these systems help you to track and measure the events and outcomes in the sales and marketing processes. These insights arederived from reports created by the software which can then be used to compare planned vs actual results. In summary what gets measured gets improved or discontinued. This is the key formula for success.

Lack a system to get sales from their current customer base

There is a well known saying that eighty percent of your sales should come from twenty percent of your customers. Your task is to achieve or exceed this figure. Customers who have already bought from you are easier and more cost effective to persuade to buy from you than prospects that have not. A combination of good web based crm software and sales forecasting software should give you the insight of recent activity and allow you to search for opportunities in your current customer lists.

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