Sales Management Association Webcast
28 October 2014
Presented by
Preparing the Sales Plan: Best Practice
Approaches from High Performing Sales Forces
About The Sales Management Association
A global, cross-industry professional association for sales
operations and sales management.
Focused in providing research, case studies, training, peer
networking, and professional development to our membership.
Fostering a community of thought-leaders, service providers,
academics, and practitioners.
Today’s Speakers
#SalesPlanPrep
Sales Management Association Webcast
28 October 2014
Presented by
Preparing the Sales Plan: Best Practice
Approaches from High Performing Sales Forces
#SalesPlanPrep
PREPARING THE SALES PLAN:
BEST PRACTICES OF HIGH-PERFORMING
SALES FORCES
October 28, 2014
Peter Ostrow, VP and Research Group Director
Sales Effectiveness, Customer Management
Business pressures:
Because sales is a futures market
180
43%
25% 23% 22%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
Insufficient data on current pipelined
deals entered by reps
CRM / SFA has insufficient
analytical capabilities
Inability to weight deals according to customer buying
patterns, needs
Lack of accountability among reps re:
forecasts
Percentage of Respondents
n = 83 All companies
Barriers to accurate sales forecasting:
Too much humanity
180
44%
36% 35% 34%
23%
15%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
Insufficient
data on
current deals
in the pipe
entered
by reps
Over-‐
confidence,
“sand-‐
bagging”
Lack of
manager
enforcement
of rep
data entry
Lack of
reps'
accountability
Inability to
understand
probability
deals to
close
Inability to
weight deals
by historical
performance
Percentage of respondents
n = 144
All companies
Definition of
Maturity Class Mean Class
Performance
Best-in-Class:
Top 20%
of aggregate
performance scorers
§ 99% total company team attainment of sales quota
§ 75% of sales reps achieving individual quota
§ 13.1% year-over-year growth in total company revenue; 92% showed improvement
§ 3.3% year-over-year improvement in (reduction of) average sales cycle; 39% showed improvement
Industry Average:
Middle 50%
of aggregate
performance scorers
§ 61% total company team attainment of sales quota
§ 50% of sales reps achieving individual quota
§ 4.3% year-over-year growth in total company revenue; 55% showed improvement
§ 0.4% year-over-year improvement in (reduction of) average sales cycle; 14% showed improvement
Laggard:
Bottom 30%
of aggregate
performance scorers
§ 46% total company team attainment of sales quota
§ 27% of sales reps achieving individual quota
§ 0.5% year-over-year decline in total company revenue; 36% showed improvement
§ 3.8% year-over-year decline in (lengthening of) average sales cycle; 19% showed improvement
Best-in-Class: Where do you fit?
Best-in-Class sales management
competencies
180
87%
80%
58% 59%
70%
47%
57%
67%
40%
30%
45%
60%
75%
90%
Make sales
territories as
equitable
as possible
Compensate sellers
for both individual
and team / group
accomplishments
Sales contests have evolved
from being purely metrics
driven to tool used to drive,
monitor behaviors / outcomes
Percent of respondents
n = 245
Best-‐in-‐Class Industry Average Laggard
Maturity of data integration:
Why good data matters
180
13%
25%
31%
1% 0%
9%
35%
23%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
All enterprise applications with customer master/
transaction data fully integrated are enriched with data from external sources
Data manually moved between
applications
Limited integration between
data silos forcing users to reference multiple
sources
No integration
Percentage of Respondents
n = 104 Best-‐in-‐Class All Others
How often should I publish
my sales forecast?
180
39%
56%
6%
17%
60%
22%
0%
15%
30%
45%
60%
On-‐demand, always
available in real-‐time;
no need to actually
“publish” a forecast
Daily to
monthly
Quarterly
or less often
Percentage of Respondents
n = 139
Best-‐in-‐Class All others
Why you should mimic the Best-in-Class:
This stuff really works
180
61% 61%
45%
33%
46% 42%
33% 28%
45%
25% 22% 21%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
Using forecasting process
to add extra resources to deals most likely
to close
Understanding which opportunities are most/
least likely to close
Using forecasting process
to “walk away” from deals
least likely to close
Using forecasting process to identify
potential “no decisions”
Percent indicating 4/5 on a 1-‐5 scale
n = 139 Best-‐in-‐Class Industry Average Laggard
Tangible, measurable ROI
from better sales planning
83% 78%
55% 50%
59%
40% 32%
25%
10%
30%
50%
70%
90%
Understanding customers'
business challenges
Retaining top sales talent
Sales forecast perceived as
accurate/
trustworthy by sr. management,
entire company
Sales leaders use forecasting process
to coach reps Percent indicating 4/5 on a 1-‐5 scale
n = 139 Best-‐in-‐Class All others
What's in YOUR market share?
13%
38%
31%
7%
22%
36%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
We are a dominant provider in our market and have achieved full penetration of
almost all our accounts
We have very strong penetration
in most of our accounts but could still benefit from additional up-‐sell or cross-‐sell
revenue
We have reasonable account penetration but are definitely
“leaving money on the table”
Percentage of Respondents
n = 104 Best-‐in-‐Class All Others
What happens when you reduce
sales friction?
180
180
88%
61%
41%
22%
77%
59%
38%
14%
10%
30%
50%
70%
90%
Customer
retention
Reps
achieving
quota
Lead
acceptance
rate
Lead
conversion
rate
Pe rc en ta ge o f A tt ai nm en t
n = 261
Data analytics applied to deal velocity All others
THANK YOU
Peter Ostrow
VP and Research Group Director
S A L E S P L A N N I N G O V E R V I E W
Leader In Cloud-Based Enterprise Performance Management
October 28, 2014
Finance Has Moved Out Of Excel Hell
Excel Hell
Manual
Error-prone
No data security
Host Analytics EPM Suite
Speed: faster processes
Accountability: across the org
Insight: actionable
Planning
Close
Analytics $
But Sales Is Still Stuck In Excel Hell
Sales Planning
Territory planning
Quota planning
Commission planning
Sales forecasting
Major Pain
Data dump to Excel
Map data together
Try to model and analyze
No data security,
workflow, or controls
Siloed Systems, not Designed for Modeling
Finance Silo
Transaction history
Not multi-dimensional
No actions
Sales doesn’t use
Sales Silo
Point-in-time
Not multi-dimensional
No cost information
Finance doesn’t use
Host Analytics Sales Planning
Key Advantages
Trending with history + present
Multi-dimensional
Actions tied to costs
Integrated data
Unified application
Familiar Excel front-end
Sales Planning
General Ledger CRM System
Model Sales Impact With One Source Of Truth
Tie Corporate plan to Sales plan
Streamline weekly executive reporting
“Early warning” system
Provide models + data from financial systems to sales Empower Sales Ops, Management More effective/efficient sales plan Identify issues earlier in the quarter Agile modeling and planning:
Answer the what-if questions See impacts before implementing
CFO
VP Sales
FP&A
Sales Ops $
Sales Forecasting
Challenges
• Frequent, tedious, critical
• Done in spreadsheets
• Adjustments at all levels of mgmt
• No reporting flexibility
Host Analytics Solution
• Bottom-up review and modification by
week
• Sales stage weighting updates w/ flow
through
• Discount modeling
• Waterline forecasting
Quota and Commission Planning
Challenges
• Complex, Excel-based modeling
• Multiple scenarios
• Multiple commission plans, Spiffs, etc.
• Often disconnected from corporate budget
Host Analytics Solution
• Model top-down, bottom-up, and middle-
out
• Analyze individual performance by tier
• Understand group performance/overlay
• Model spot bonuses, Spiffs, other
exceptions
Trend Reporting
Challenges
• CRM systems don’t capture history
• Manual data dumps to Excel
• Difficult data mapping – accounts to
opps to leads
• Time wasted “wrangling” data vs.
analyzing
Host Analytics Solution
• Powerful, week-by-week comparisons
and waterfall reports
• Analyze across reps, managers, sales
stage, forecast categories, and more
Integration To Many Popular CRM Systems
Microsoft Dynamics CRM
Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online
NetSuite
Oracle CRM On Demand/ Siebel CRM On Demand
Oracle E-Business Suite
Sage
Salesforce
SAP Cloud for Customer
Sugar CRM (On Site or On Demand)
Sales Planning Processes Requirements
Sales Forecasting
Sales stages, week over
week, forecast categories
Quota Planning
Top-down, bottom-up,
ramp, capacity
Territory Planning
By driver, by line of
business, ties to quota
Commission Planning
Tied to sales forecast, ties
to finance plan, tiered,
group, spot bonus
Trend Reporting
Ad hoc, coverage ratios,
month end reports,
familiar reporting
CRM Integration
On demand, weekly,
opportunity record with
attributes
Reuse the Best of What You Have with
Host Analytics AirliftXL
Reuse Existing Models
Performance metrics
Formulas
Formatting
Structures
Import
AirliftXL
Copy/paste data & accounts
Offline planning
Formulas, grid
Templates
Report sets
Reports
Report books
Formatting
Excel Add-in
Attach files
File cabinet
Template line notes
Board books
Unique features
Host Analytics is nice because if
you’re familiar with Excel you don’t feel
like you have to relearn everything.”
“
FP&A, Accounting, And Sales On The Same
Page
•
Disparate ERP, CRM, BI and Excel systems•
FP&A was the bottleneck for data•
Accounting had limited reporting from NetSuite•
Sales Ops in Excel hell and struggling to model commission impactsBEFORE AFTER
•
Host Analytics EPM Suite with Sales Planning on top of existing systems and replacing Excel•
FP&A empowers other teams with data, models and tools•
Accounting gets multi-dimensional and presentation quality reporting•
Sales gains a modeling tool for commission impactsGenesys Telecommunications Laboratories, Inc. provides contact center solutions for mid-sized to large enterprises. 2K employees. $750M revenue. Pre-IPO. Use NetSuite, Salesforce, Cloud9.
Sales Planning at iCIMS Starts With Trend
Reporting
iCIMS, Inc. provides Software-as-a-Service talent management platforms. Privately-held, profitable 300+ employees, 1,900+ small to Fortune 500 customers worldwide.
Sales Dashboards and Scorecards
Design daily metrics (leads, ops, pipeline, etc.) for inclusion on both SFDC and Host Analytics
Sales Forecasting For Fast Growing pre-IPO Co
•
NetSuite had limited reporting•
Excel not scaling for FP&A team•
Sales forecasting challenging to manage with Salesforce.com and ExcelBEFORE AFTER
•
Host Analytics Planning Cloud with Sales PlanningTubmogul is a video advertising platform. It has 340 employees and is expanding globally. (NASDAQ: TUBE). NetSuite ERP, Salesforce CRM
Key Takeaways
Stop wrangling data and
drive sales performance
There’s a better solution
for Sales Planning
No more Sales-Finance
siloes
S A L E S P L A N N I N G
Leader In Cloud-Based Enterprise Performance Management
