Good post from Brad Feld on using SIMPLE heat-map based sales tracking tools:
...Rather than show leads by sales person with contrived forecast numbers and ratios, the CEO showed a heat map of the top 40 target customers (in two separate charts - top 20, second 20). For each company, he sorted by number of potential seats, listed the sales person that owns the account, and the geographic location of the company. The interesting data was the heat map. All existing customers were colored blue. There were three columns for each company for each division that we sell into (there are three distinct ways that we can get to a customer.) Each cell was then colored either green for active, yellow for not active, and red for "the company told us to go away."...
Jeff Nolan has some good comments on how:
...more complex the sales pipeline/forecast tool, and subsequently the more explaining that is needed to cover it, is really just a cover for a sales organization and management team that is struggling with the sales process...
As for my contribution i would add the following three Occam rules of thumb..
- The level of confusion of a company is a function of the square size (measured using the number of pages) of the power point presentation used during the board review...
- Any company that cannot model it's sales process, and describe where each propect is in the sales pipe is in deep trouble... , and when using those sales pipe model, the procpect do not move forward from review to review, trouble is lurking...
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