On Dec 8, I attended Bowery Capital’s excellent Sales Summit 2016. Larry D’Angelo, SVP of Sales at LogMeIn, kicked things off by sharing his best practices for B2B sales forecasting.
The biggest takeaway: Ask prospects directly if you are winning. “If no one says you are winning, then you are losing”
Here are my detailed notes on his process:
- Train managers first then AEs on a standard, best-practice questioning methodology (QM) for pipeline management
- Discovery
- Qualify: BANT + process + competition + scope
- BANT
- B: Do they have the budget? Is it approved?
- A: Who has to say yes to this purchase? Who can say no?
- N: Did the customer say we can meet their needs? Do they want to buy our product?
- T: Whey will they buy? Why? What compelling event did you create? What if they do nothing – what bad thing happens?
- Process: What are the approval, buying, and legal processes? (they are different)
- Competition: Is the customer looking at other solutions? If so, where do you stand?
- BANT
- Analyze: Evaluation criteria/process; Decision-making process; reconfirm BANT+C (checkbox)
- Evaluate: Initial pricing sent; Prospect confirmed we are winning (checkbox; “Help me understand which way you are leaning?”); legal & purchasing process; evaluation outcomes
- Negotiation: negotiation & price; hurdles to close?
- Sale Pending: details & references; timelines for signature and payment; use cases
- Embed pipeline management into CRM opportunities (instead of having AEs select stages and/or probabilities)
- Most, if not all, fields should be textboxes for notes rather than checkboxes
- Base on client actions (not AE actions) and on information shared by prospect (not AE opinion)
- Keep as simple as possible; fields exist for the benefit of AEs to close deals, not solely for management inspection
- “The Science”: Algorithmically determine probabilities based on pipeline management field completion of previously won & lost deals
- “The Art”: Build the forecast deal by deal
- Do not just rely on the aggregate weighted pipeline
- Managers should start by asking:
- (a) Why should the prospect buy anything?
- (b) Why should they buy now? What bad thing will happen if they don’t take action?
- (c) Why should they buy our product? Which of our key differentiators has the prospect locked on to?
- Then ask, “Are we winning, losing, or are you unsure?”
- If the answer is anything other than winning, then the deal should not be included in the forecast for the quarter
One later speaker, Steve Hirschfeld of Medidata, added a good additional point on improving forecast outcomes: make introductions between your execs and the prospects execs.
Finally, (unrelated to forecasting), Kristen Habacht of Trello stressed the following:
- Specialize – SDRs –> hunters + solutions engineers –> account managers + CSMs
- Build your sales operations function early
- When hiring, audition candidates by having them pitch your product to you (give them a deck to prep with a couple days in advance; however, Kristen has found that the best hires do not “pitch” using a deck)
- Create a clear progression/promotion path for people with an expected timeframe