Opportunity Stage Forecasting

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If you don’t have clear data already on your lead sources or historical acquisition data, you’ll have a hard time creating an accurate forecast with this method.

2. Length of Sales Cycle Forecasting
What it is: This method uses data on how long a lead typically takes to close to forecast an individual rep's sales. Here’s how: Let’s say your average time-to-close is four months and a rep has been working a potential client for three months, your forecast might suggest they have a 75 percent chance of closing the deal.

What’s great about this method is that it’s completely objective. Meaning your sales rep’s "gut" is out of the picture and your forecast isn’t hanging on the fact that they "feel good" about this prospect, but rather on how long it has taken similar ones in the past to close.

What’s even more beneficial is that the length of sales cycle method can be applied to a multitude of sales cycles, depending on the source. So, if a referral client typically takes two weeks, while a trade show source takes six months, you can group these deal types by their source and still have an accurate picture.

Who it’s for: If you’re carefully and accurately tracking when and how a prospect enters your sales pipeline, this is a great option. It means a tight integration between both your sales and marketing plans, however.

So if you’re not at a stage where this information is bolivia telegram data easily accessible to both teams, or your CRM doesn’t integrate with your marketing software, your reps are going to be bogged down in manually entering information and not out there closing.

3.
What it is: The opportunity stage method takes your sales pipeline, chops it up, and assigns a percentage value to each one based on how likely a lead is to close. So, a new prospect might have a 10% potential close rate, whereas someone who has gone through a product demo might be at 80%.

Then, you pick a forecasting period—monthly, quarterly, yearly—and multiply each deal’s potential value by where it is in your pipeline. So, a $2,500 deal that’s gone through a product demo is worth $2,000 ($2,500 x 80%).

Who it’s for: Again, you’ll need a good set of historical data in order to use this method accurately, so if you’re starting out it’s probably not the right one. The opportunity stage method also doesn’t take into account the age of a lead, and assigns the same value to a prospect that’s been humming and hawing for five months as it does to a hot, new lead.