It’s that time of year when we’re all assessing the strength of our sales pipeline in order to build our plans and budget for achieving next year’s revenue targets.
A critical factor that must be examined is not only the size of your pipeline (in terms of number and size of deals forecasted to close) but the true health of it.
Here are some questions to get you started:
How much of your current forecast is real and gives you confidence as you plan your budgets for 2010?
Assuming all forecasted deals close as predicted, how many more deals will you need to meet your 2010 numbers?
Assuming only 50% of forecasted deals close, what’s the impact to your lead generation plans for 2010?
According to CSO Insights’ 2009 Sales Optimization study of over 1800 B2B organizations, only 47% of forecasted deals actually close. This means that many companies have an over-inflated pipeline, providing false hope and an inaccurate assessment of what is truly required to generate the sales needed for next year.
Now is the time to drive out all subjectivity in order to achieve forecast and pipeline accuracy. A realistic diagnosis of the health of your 2010 pipeline is the foundation on which to base the critical budgetary and strategic decisions that you are making right now.
