In a past life I was a regular horse rider, in fact I had lessons and I've ridden horses in a number of places around the world. Patagonia, Brazil, the Atlas Mountains and even Windsor Park here in the UK. This horse riding activities were curtailed as my partner is allergic to horses.
What has this got to do with sales forecasting?
Salespeople like horses, think for themselves, if they want to go in a a direction they will. That means there is a problem for forecasting. You cannot take three years day and predict the future. But I have worked were we ran a 95% accurate forecast.
How did we do that? We didn't use models that try and predict the salesforce, as like horses they are unpredictable. How did we do it? We did it through the power of social.
Recently, I joined forces with Abe Awasthi, Senior Manager at Deloitte, for the webinar “Sales forecasting fundamentals,” hosted by the Sales Management Association, the first in a three-part series on sales force effectiveness. In the session, we walk through some recommended best practices for sales forecasting and discuss some roles that predictive analytics and machine learning are starting to play in the sales forecasting process. As Abe describes, there is more disruption today than at any other time in modern history; intelligent companies are figuring out how to disrupt themselves before someone new comes in and does it to them.
https://www.anaplan.com/blog/sales-forecasting-fundamentals-stay-ahead/
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