One might ask, what relevance does Einstein have to do with Sales Forecasting and Sales Pipeline Management?
Einstein did a lot of things in his lifetime that we recognize as genius. But what most people do not appreciate is his conviction and insatiable desire to challenge leadership behaviors that were not reflective of having an open and curious mind, being willing to constantly innovate and experiment to crystallize new ways of evolving.
For too long sales practices and methods have stayed in their own unique shell, and communication lexicon, that has a limited vocabulary, and limited digital Omni-channel capabilities for rapid evolution.
Revisiting Einstein’s wisdom is key to unlocking Sales leader’s skills to embrace Big Data and Predictive Analytics as the New Normal and their Future Sales Highway. Like WAYZ has done for intelligent real-time traffic routing, Predictive Sales Clouds will navigate sales professionals to See More and Win More. We call this the New Sales GPS. Already companies using predictive are increasing their sales professional’s productivity by over 50%.
Einstein believed passionately that: Imagination is more important than knowledge.
As I travel globally and talk to diverse C levels in different regions, I increasingly find that the Americans are constantly willing to invest in innovation and experiment, the Scandinavians, even more so. The Canadians are losing ground on both international innovation and also productivity metrics, from OECD, World Economic Forum, and other Global Productivity Ranking Studies.
Today, Canada achieves a “B” grade for labor productivity growth, and in other reports on overall innovation rankings rated as a “D.” America is also rapidly losing ground on Productivity metrics against countries like Australia, Norway, Sweden and Japan. Embracing our imagination more takes quality time to reflect and get into a quieter zone where our right brains are tapped more frequently.
This scarce energy force field is under siege in The Age of Distraction, where field sales time has dropped since 2011 from 41% of Sales productivity in field to approaching only 30% of a Sales Professionals time is spent on the right things – to drive productivity and revenue growth – direct customer sales interactions. (Accenture, 2016, plus SalesChoice Research)
Using Predictive Sales Analytics to Crack the Imagination Gap
We have already learned at SalesChoice that companies using predictive sales prioritization and predictive sales forecasting methods will increase their sales productivity by 30-60% pending on the data quality and discipline in their sales cultures. We have learned that companies can get started with as little as 300 historical sales wins or losses to take advantage of our predictive approaches and increase conversion rates by 25% immediately upon install, simply by following our predictive sales priority ranking innovation using: A’s vs. B’s vs. C’s prioritization methods, scientifically derived.
Sales Resources spend too much time chasing the DUDs and not letting go. We have learned there is a statistical mathematical threshold in every unique sales opportunity.
We believe there is a statistical force field in play, must like Einstein proposed in 1907 a model of matter where each atom in a lattice structure is an independent harmonic oscillator. In the Einstein model, each atom oscillates independently—a series of equally spaced quantized states for each oscillator. Einstein was aware that getting the frequency of the actual oscillations would be different, but he nevertheless proposed this theory because it was a particularly clear demonstration that quantum mechanics could solve the specific heat problem in classical mechanics.
Translated into simple sales language, we know that average sales cycles close within a specific period of time, based on our opportunity types, and also historical performance. What Sales people keep doing is too often not qualifying tightly early in the discovery and waste time continuing conversations that statistically will never close, or chasing DUDS which have underlying statistical or atom lattice like patterns that are simply not acting as harmonic oscillator(s).
Predictive Analytics are the new harmonic force field.
We will soon be able to see all the interaction signals inside the CRM and outside the CRM correlated against the highest performers so underperforming sales professionals can easily see the norms, behaviors in real time as comparatives. Nuances like how many touch points a winning sales rep executes against before crossing off his or her list, how much face to face time on average is needed to close a sale, or the sentiment in the emails how big is an insight trigger of closed business vs. pure noise, as the real tough questions have not been asked early: i.e.: Budget availability and approval stakeholders.
Predictive Sales Cloud: Case Highlights – RelationEdge
For example, RelationEdge monitored SalesChoice’s predictive sales forecasts over three months and stopped using their old practices as we were right every month at 93% or more. The productivity savings was over five days a month to the CEO and his leadership team. They can trust our signals and know where they will end next quarter reliably.
So Sales Leaders need to ensure they have time to imagine new possibilities using new methods. Time is scarcer now than in any time in the history of sales. Sales is not easy. It’s time however to imagine new possibilities.
Summary
In closing, Einstein said: The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. This new normal will challenge all of our current sales practices and operating processes as the B2B Sales World is augmented over the next 25 years with Intelligence Sales and machine learning inputs and outputs creating a Predictive Workflow logic layer that will rapidly become a new Einstein like Sales Highway: Accurate, Trusted, and Smarter.
Einstein also defined Insanity: “as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
The Breakthrough Challenge
I spend a lot of times doing Sales Coaching with C Levels as well, with Dr. Kevin Francis, our Chairman, as we are both concerned about the leadership skills gap in embracing the unexpected, and imagining new possibilities and breaking through the transactional dessert that is numbing so many sales leaders world-wide.
Time to break free, and experience different results.
Join us to use your Imaginations More, and experiment with our 30 Day Free Trial offer or ask for a DEMO.