Track Sales Forecast Performance
Learning objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Identify the average forecast accuracy rate.
- Describe how to see today’s forecast compared to the past.
- List forecast report examples for tracking performance.
Laura and her team at Get Cloudy have found a good forecasting rhythm. Reps are updating their opportunities regularly and everyone is working from the same set of data when they’re talking about sales forecasts. But she wonders if there’s more she can do to help her sales team ensure their forecasts are even more accurate.
Forecast Accuracy
The goal of any sales forecast is to ensure that it provides an accurate prediction of what’s to come. Laura and her team know that if they provide an inaccurate forecast, it can cause a cascading effect across the business. In our experience at Salesforce, we find that forecasts are within 10% of actual sales more than 50% of the time. If your forecasts are more accurate than that, huge kudos to you!
Forecasting isn’t an exact science, and during any forecast period you might run into some unexpected circumstances that change your forecast. And that’s OK. An inaccurate forecast may indicate unpredictable changes in demand that require more research. You may also find that some sales reps are better at forecasting what they can close than others. The key is understanding how accurate your forecast is over time and how often it hits the mark (or misses wide left). Gather additional details about market changes, who consistently meets the numbers they predict, and where people could use some guidance in their predictions. The very act of forecasting gives you a head start to helping your teams meet their sales targets.
Today’s Forecast vs the Past
It’s the middle of the forecast period, and Laura isn’t sure if her forecast is correct and if her team is on track to meet their quota. She selects the Charts button on the forecast page, and can see what’s changed this period, and determines that her team is making steady progress.
That’s good! But, she’s still not at ease about whether her forecast is accurate. She knows that since the team started using Salesforce, the data is there to tell her what she wants to know.
She uses the Historical Trends chart, also available on the forecasts page, to evaluate how her team’s current commitments compare to their performance in past periods. Knowing how her team’s forecasts were adjusted in the past helps lead to a more accurate forecast for the current period. And because Get Cloudy Consulting has Historical Trending for forecasting set to 13 months, Laura can compare today’s forecast to the forecast at the same time last year.
Dig Deeper to Learn More
Laura and her team want to know more about their sales team's performance against expectations. She also knows that Salesforce reports and dashboards can help her dig into what she wants to know.
To learn how to create a report or a dashboard, head over to the Reports and Dashboards in Lightning Experience module here in Trailhead.
Using custom report types for forecasting, Laura can generate her own reports and then configure dashboards to show more about her forecasts. Each report type defines the set of Salesforce records and fields available to a report based on the relationships between a primary object and its related objects. Use this table to find the forecasting report types that you can create.
Primary Object |
Use in Reports to Show... |
|---|---|
Forecasting Items |
Forecasting amounts, including adjustment amount information |
Forecasting Items with Opportunities as a related object |
Opportunity information for specific forecasting line items |
|
Forecasting Items with Opportunity Splits as a related object |
Opportunity split information for specific forecasting line items |
|
Forecasting Items with Opportunity Product as a related object |
Product family information for specific forecasting line items |
Forecasting Quotas |
Information about individual or team quotas |
|
Forecasting Quotas with Forecasting Items as a related object |
Detailed information about quota attainment percentages |
After defining a custom report type, Laura creates a report based on the type. For example, she can create reports that show:
- Forecasted versus Actual Sales
- Forecasts by opportunity segments or by opportunity size
- Opportunity split amount and percentages
- Specific products forecast performance
- Detailed information about quota and quota attainment
The items in this list are just a few examples. These reports are typically shared with company leadership, along with board members and stockholders. Reports can be combined into sales dashboards for a bird’s eye view of your sales team's performance.
Wrapping Up
Throughout these units you learned about what a sales forecast is, the people and processes involved, and the components in Salesforce that are used to build a forecast. You saw forecasts in action and followed sales manager Laura on her forecast journey. And lastly, you learned about the options available to analyze your forecast accuracy and performance and how forecasts are part of a larger cycle.
Resources
- Salesforce Help: Reviewing Week-to-Week Forecast Changes
- Salesforce Help: Finding Trends Across Forecast Periods
- Salesforce Help: Report on Sales Projections
- Trailhead: Introduction to Revenue Intelligence for Sales Cloud