31 Oct Sales Forecasting and CRM

A good sales forecast sets the stage for a business to run smoothly. Every business in existence will do a sales forecast regularly, or as often as needed. Forecasting simply means predicting the sales numbers that you or your business hope to achieve over the time period which you have specified. An accurate sales forecast will allow managers to plan accordingly, which will be invaluable to future business. An accurate sales forecast includes all areas of sales, and also considers factors that may bring about a change. There are many questions that a sales forecast involves, such as: • How many new customers do you wish to gain each year? • How many customers do you lose each year? • What is the average level of sales you make to each customer? • Are there particular months where you win or lose more customers than usual? If you are still learning about CRM, you will quickly come to learn how valuable a sales forecast is to CRM. The fact is that even though the customer will never actually see the sales forecast, they will no doubt benefit from it, as the business can learn customer patterns from the sales forecast and thus react accordingly. All in all, this creates a more reliable, authentic and efficient customer experience.