While the Sales function is critical to the health and wealth of most organizations, available Sales Automation and CRM Tools rarely live up to expectations. As a result, poorly engineered or badly implemented solutions slow down the Sales team instead of making them more productive.
Large organizations are faced with highly complex and expensive solutions, while many small and medium sized enterprises rely on disparate systems, email-based solutions or no tool at all.
Sales Forecasts and Sales Funnel Management are sometimes kept separate from Contact Management. This oversight results in a loss of executive overview and insight into current business challenges and opportunities.
The common practice of managing Sales Funnels via countless versions of spreadsheets has made sales forecasting and analysis difficult and confusing.
Email is the most popular method today to communicate information within an organization, as well as to clients and other external users. Unfortunately, email has become a victim of its own success. The recent explosion of spam, computer viruses and the sheer volume of messages have had a negative impact on workplace productivity. The unstructured nature of email messages makes it challenging to extract meaningful content.
Fortunately, most decision-makers realize today that a successful Sales Automation solution must be web-based and include support for mobile sales professionals.
In our complex world of information overload, it is important that users can quickly drill down to the relevant data and view key business parameters in convenient tables or informative charts and graphs.
As a decision support tool, sales forecasts must be dynamic in nature, rather than static documents that are updated on a periodic basis.
This paper will discuss a new Integrated Sales Funnel, Forecast and Contact Management tool that addresses many of the shortcomings of alternative approaches.
1. The Sales Management Challenge
1.1 Close Business
1.2 Collect Information
1.3 Analyze Data
2. Problems and Limitations with Traditional Methods
2.1 Email
2.2 Spreadsheets
2.3 Phone Conferences
2.4 Sales Productivity Concerns
2.5 Dynamic vs Static Forecasts
3. Internet Accessible Sales Database - WebFunnel
3.1 Capture
3.2 Share
3.3 Find
3.4 Collaborate
3.5 Plan
3.6 Simulate
3.7 Analyze
3.8 Extend
4. Sales Objects Hierarchy
4.1 Accounts
4.2 Sub-accounts
4.3 Contacts
4.4 Projects
5. External Users - Supply Chain Integration
5.1 Subsidiaries
5.2 Distributors
5.3 Clients
6. Projects - Sales Opportunities
6.1 Sales Bookings
6.2 Sales Revenues
6.3 Deliverables
6.4 Timing
6.5 Sales Funnel Stages
6.6 Forecast Flags
6.7 Project Summary
6.8 Events
6.9 Tasks
6.10 Quotations
6.11 History Log
7. Tasks
7.1 Project Tasks
7.2 General Tasks
7.3 Private Tasks
7.4 Assignment
7.5 Percent Complete
8. Email Automation
8.1 Hyperlink Access
8.2 Create Email Events
8.3 Email Trail
8.4 Task Notification
9. Analyses
9.1 Goals and Objectives
9.2 Tabular Results
9.3 Graphical Reports
9.4 Sales Funnel Dynamics
9.5 Digital Dashboard
10. Conclusion
Managing the sales process in an enterprise is becoming increasingly difficult. This section will outline some of the high expectations and demands placed on Sales Management today.
This is the primary goal of any sales organization. The sales team has a mandate to 'bring in the bacon', so that the organization can survive and finance the on-going operations. Most other sales activities support this important goal in various ways.
This objective is easy to measure after the fact, but difficult to gauge for opportunities in the pre-contract stages of the Sales Funnel.
A significant component of a Sales Manager's responsibilities is to coach, guide and support the Account Managers in their efforts to secure business for the organization.
An important role in Sales Management is to collect information from prospective and existing customers, primarily to improve the success rate in sales. However, since the sales function directly or indirectly touches almost every aspect of an enterprise, the value of the information collected far exceeds the requirements of the sales department.
Enterprise Information Consumers cover many important departments and functions. The Marketing Department needs information to evaluate the effectiveness of corporate marketing programs, the Product Management Team fine-tunes product features and positioning based on customer feedback, the Customer Care function benefits from identifying potential support issues as early as possible in the product life cycle. Last but not least, sales and customer data are important components of the Executive Decision Support process.
Collecting accurate information is always a challenge. The numerous corporate stakeholders are interested in different aspects of the collected data. Therefore, it is important to collect the information in its purest form, as close as possible to its source, leaving interpretation and analysis to other steps of the process. In a sales environment, the best source of information is the Customer himself, followed by the Account Managers who interact directly with the clients.
When Sales people report on events, a natural bias is often present as a function of the special characteristics of this profession. There is high pressure to produce results and employee dismissals are frequent when expectations are not met. Another element of bias is due to the optimistic attitude that is necessary to sustain a high energy level in face of recurring rejections.
As Sales Professionals, most of us can recall customer situations that were nothing short of disastrous, and yet, when reporting on the events to Management, we were guilty of painting a much rosier picture than what actually occurred. Who wants to acknowledge that he or she failed to qualify the account, did not anticipate competitive moves and as a result, the company ended up wasting valuable resources for no or little return?
The best way to guard against this bias is to carefully record the information collected by the sales people. Better still, the Account Managers themselves should record the information. Descriptions of customer interactions in the past cannot be changed and updates of contract values, probabilities and closing dates must be carefully logged. When companies record every step of the difficult journey that opportunities undertake to pass through the Sales Funnel towards signed contracts, Account Managers tend to be more careful about their own estimates and improve their accuracy over time.
The value of the collected data goes beyond the information contained therein. The data also constitute an important audit trail for the Sales activities to the benefit of both the Company and the Account Manager.
From the Company's perspective, there is a record of an Account Manager's visit to a prospective client, customer or competitive intelligence was collected and oftentimes some progress was achieved from a Sales Funnel perspective. The value of this contribution can then be compared to the cost in time and expenses for the visit.
Maybe surprisingly, the audit is also valuable to the Account Manager. Sales Management has an opportunity to
continuously monitor the sales progress in the Sales Funnel, even during the otherwise hard-to-measure steps prior to
signed contracts. When the performance proves to be inadequate, the Sales Manager can provide coaching and support
in a timely fashion.
In reply to the perennial question:
"What have you done for me lately?"
the Account Manager can point to the collected data and resulting progress in the Sales Funnel, which is a much more
convincing response than:
"Making all kinds of sales calls, getting people excited, sorting out
some customer issues and really working hard".
The bottom line is that there is an audit trail where both bottom line results and effort levels are recorded.
As discussed above, the data should be collected as close as possible to the source, while the analysis itself normally takes place at the Sales Management or Executive level.
For efficient analysis, it is clearly not sufficient to view the data merely as a long list of consecutive customer
interactions. Visualization tools are required to aggregate and display the data in a variety of tabular and
graphical formats.
Furthermore, the various Enterprise Information Consumers shall have the option to easily
filter the data in order to find the grains of gold hidden in a desert of sand.
Many organizations rely on traditional tools that do not fulfill the growing information requirements of the Sales function and other Enterprise Information Consumers. This condition is typically due to organizational inertia exacerbated by the difficulty in finding the right tools and the perceived risk in implementing them.
Email is the most popular business communications tool in use today, easily overshadowing phone calls and personal interactions. Given its enormous success, what are then the problems and limitations of email?
Email is first and foremost a victim of its own success. Most business people receive a large number of emails, the majority of which are junk mail, irrelevant notices or FYI (For Your Information) messages to inform colleagues of the daily battles in the enterprise. The enormous volume of emails makes us less productive. Sifting through the In Basket is a dreaded chore every morning that some people are only able to complete by lunchtime. With half the day gone, no 'real' work has yet been achieved.
Another deficiency with email is that it is largely unstructured information. The data fields are typically few: date, subject, importance, sender, recipients, and body text. This makes it hard to ascertain the relevance of incoming messages, as well as difficult to classify and find information contained in old messages. The requirements of an Enterprise Information Consumer quickly outgrow the capabilities of email search tools and folder options.
On the other side of the ledger, email remains very useful, thanks to its universality and the 'push' functionality inherent in email. The challenge is to know how best to utilize this tool.
Many organizations rely on spreadsheets as the collaboration and information dissemination tool for sales
forecasts. Its major benefit is relative ease-of-use and universal availability, but sales planning by spreadsheets
present many challenges. A simple example is shown below:
Users create, modify and distribute multiple versions of the Sales Funnel, which leads to widespread confusion. Heroic work efforts are required to consolidate and harmonize these spreadsheets into a unified version.
To make matters worse, there is no easy way to accommodate 'what-if' scenarios, other than by changing the input values and saving a new version of the spreadsheet, a practice which further adds to the version confusion.
Validating input and enforcing consistent assumptions and rules present further challenges.
Spreadsheets are very popular in sales forecasting, but have severe limitations in a work collaboration context.
Many Sales departments have a weekly phone conference to review the Sales Funnel and discuss issues and challenges to close the business at hand. This practice also presents certain pitfalls that should be avoided.
Scheduling a suitable time for all participants is a serious challenge in its own right. It is true that the Sales Manager can mandate participation at a fixed time, but that approach leaves little flexibility to accommodate real-world events like business travel, customer meetings, last-minute proposal deadlines, etc.
Another problem with Phone Conferences is that the participants have to dedicate their time to the full duration of the meeting, even though many items discussed do not concern them, reducing the time available for 'real' sales activities.
Furthermore, there is a significant administrative burden associated with the recording of action items and on-going monitoring to ensure that the assigned tasks get done.
Phone Conferences can be productive and useful, but one must guard against their shortcomings.
Preparing Sales Forecasts using traditional methods is a very labor-intensive process and results in lost Sales Productivity.
Account Managers spend a considerable amount of time preparing account reviews and sales forecasts, when they would rather focus their energies on selling. Sales Managers and Business Managers are equally busy trying to review, analyze and consolidate the forecasts. Throughout this process, Account Managers have to be consulted on a frequent basis, further slowing them down.
Many sales people view this process as a poor use of their time, an unproductive activity mandated by the Executive Management and the corporate accountants. This negative attitude is largely due to the fact that there is very little return to the sales team for this effort.
A more productive approach is to involve the sales people more directly in the data gathering and forecast process. Account Managers more easily buy into sales processes, which actually help them get the job done.
In the traditional approach to sales management, forecasts are prepared on a periodic basis. In between the static forecast dates, it is difficult to accommodate new information.
A strong case can be made for a Sales Funnel solution, which is truly dynamic in nature. The forecast is continuously being updated, giving management the information that they need to run the company. Moreover, since the data is fresh and captured at the source, accuracy is higher.
A sales management solution implemented on a central database is the recommended approach to manage today's sales challenges, while at the same time overcoming the limitations and shortcomings of traditional methods. By making the database accessible via the Internet or Intranets, the tool can be used anywhere and anytime and it can be extended to business partners, remote offices, distributors or clients.
One such tool, the WebFunnel, will be examined in closer detail.
This solution is based on the core Sales functions to Capture and Share data, Find key information, Collaborate with colleagues and customers, Plan, Simulate and Analyze business related activities, as well as the ability to Extend the functionality to mobile users.
Information is captured as close as possible to its source. Business partners, distributors and clients can themselves enter selected data into the sales database. In other situations, the data capture is done by Account Managers, support staff or other employees with direct customer contact.
By virtue of capturing the relevant information in a web based sales database, other users with the proper authority levels can peruse the same data. Sharing becomes a seamless, automatic component of the sales process.
In order to further simplify the dissemination of information throughout the enterprise, the author of en event can mark it as a special 'Hot List' item, or automatically send it to internal or external users via email.
The sum of all customer Events becomes a valuable knowledge base, which can be exploited by the sales team.
For instance, an Account Manager may be involved in a competitive situation against another vendor. By entering the vendor's name in the Event filter, he can quickly find all other Accounts and Events where this name was encountered in the past. Armed with the information contained in the Sales Funnel knowledge base, the Sales Team can improve its overall effectiveness.
The WebFunnel lets you collaborate with colleagues, remote sales offices and distributors.
Since all users are working from the same set of information, contained in a central database, work collaboration is greatly facilitated.
In addition to sharing information, you can assign opportunity related Tasks to other parties. Tasks can be accepted or rejected and you can easily monitor the current percent completion of the Tasks.
For more information, please see the Section Tasks below.
The extensive forecast capabilities in the WebFunnel allow you to plan your business activities. Unlike many other forecast tools, the WebFunnel lets you break down the forecast amounts by Customer Deliverable by calendar month. As a result, you have access to a detailed shipping plan by product line, geography, sales person, account, etc.
Thanks to the use of Forecast Flags, you can quickly simulate different business outcomes. For instance, you may have a Forecast Flag called 'Backup' to indicate opportunities which are held 'in the reserve' to be called upon if necessary to achieve a sales 'stretch'. By changing your forecast filters, you can immediately see the effect of moving the 'Backup' opportunities into the official forecast.
The WebFunnel lets you enter sales goals and objectives for bookings and revenues. You can easily monitor your progress in terms of actual and forecast achievements compared to the official plan.
Filters are used extensively throughout the Sales Funnel, which help you to quickly find the sales information by Account Manager, geography, time period or many other categories.
Of particular interest is the ability to view the sales information in charts and graphs, using the new W3C web graphics standard called Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG).
Like other effective Sales Automation Tools, the WebFunnel extends the functionality to mobile users. All basic features are supported on Pocket PC™ devices, RIM™ pagers and WAP capable cell phones.
In addition, mobile professionals can replicate relevant portions of the WebFunnel on their laptops, work in complete off-line, disconnected mode and synchronize with the central database upon connection.
This section describes the hierarchy of the main sales related objects in the WebFunnel.
Accounts form the basis of the WebFunnel and specify an existing or potential client organization. All Contacts and Sales opportunities must belong to an Account. Accounts can be present in the database without sales opportunities, but the reverse is not true.
Accounts include the standard name and address information, geography, categories, as well as hyperlinks to web sites and other sources of information.
Sub-accounts can be used to manage customer divisions, remote sales offices or distributors. A Sub-account is a descendant of an Account.
Sub-accounts have their own Contacts, which are different from those of the Account itself.
An interesting feature is the ability to provide partial access to the WebFunnel for an Account and its Sub-accounts. This capability can be used for Supply Chain Integration purposes.
Contacts are descendants of either Accounts or Sub-accounts. With a single click, you can view the Contact information for an Account.
Since the email addresses are hyperlinks, you can quickly and conveniently send an email to a Contact. You can also automatically send an email to a Contact when you create a new Event in the WebFunnel.
Busy sales professionals on the road can access the Contact information from a RIM™ Pager, Pocket PC™ device or cell phone with WAP capability.
To make it easier to find the correct contact information, you can designate a Primary Contact for each sales opportunity.
Projects are Sales opportunities and must belong to an Account or Sub-account.
For more information, please see the Section on Projects below.
In order to achieve a tighter sales integration, Subsidiaries, Distributors and Clients can be given partial access to the Sales Database. Thus, the information is captured at source, and your supply-chain partners perform the task of updating the database for you.
The sales integration achieved goes beyond sharing and updating information. You can assign Tasks to Distributors and they can do the same for you.
In some cases, you may not want to provide subsidiaries and remote sales offices with full access to the WebFunnel. These organizations are then designated as Accounts in the WebFunnel and their clients in turn are Sub-accounts. Individual sales opportunities are Projects under the Sub-accounts.
Under this scenario, the remote offices can only view and update their own opportunities.
You can easily monitor the performance of the remote sales units by filtering on their Account designations.
In an analogous fashion, Distributors can be given partial access to the WebFunnel. Their individual clients will be Sub-accounts of the Distributor Account.
For instance, your organization may have a distributor named 'Benson' selling your product in Texas. Benson can be designated an Account and the individual customers pursued by Benson will be Sub-accounts belonging to the Account 'Benson'. For example, the City of Dallas may be one such Sub-account, with its own list of sales opportunities.
You can also assign Tasks to Distributors (and vice versa) to further facilitate the work collaboration. For example, Benson may assign a Task to your Customer Service VP (which he or she may accept or reject) to resolve a customer care issue with the City of Dallas to prepare the ground for add-on orders. You and your Distributor share the common goal of closing the deal with the customer, so it is to your advantage to collaborate in this endeavor.
Distributors clearly benefit from having a direct line of communication with your Sales Database. At the same time, they can use the WebFunnel as their own sales tool to manage joint opportunities. If you wish, it is possible to designate a secondary contract value to indicate the Distributor's price to the end-user.
Distributors can only view and update their own opportunities.
Clients can automatically inject Events into the Sales Funnel using the Email Trail feature. At the same time, they get a well-structured email describing the previous email interactions between vendor and client. For more information, please see the Section on Email Trail.
You can also provide clients with read-only access to automatically prepared quotations, as described in the Section Quotations.
The sales opportunities are referred to as 'Projects'. Every Project must belong to an Account or Sub-account. The Projects constitute the workhorse of the WebFunnel.
The Sales Bookings can be recorded in your default currency, or any of 20 foreign currencies that you can define.
You can record two different Sales Bookings values. For instance, a Distributor may define his own contract value, which includes his mark-up and other deliverables that he provides to the end customer.
You can allocate Sales Revenue amounts for your opportunities over a 12-month period.
In addition, you can designate a recurring revenue stream for up to 60 months to capture on-going maintenance contracts and such.
As described below, the Sales Revenues are linked to specified Customer Deliverables.
As for Sales Revenue amounts, you can define Customer Deliverables for your opportunities over a 12-month period.
You can designate a recurring pattern of Deliverables for up to 60 months.
You can enter cost, selling price and gross margin for each Deliverable that makes up a Project. The WebFunnel automatically calculates a blended gross margin for the entire Project.
The Revenues and Deliverables are aggregated across all Projects as part of the Financial Analyses. You can easily track the shipping plans by item and month for the entire company.
A Revenue Table example with Deliverables is shown below:
Several Timing values are defined for each Project.
The most important date is the anticipated Closing Date for an opportunity. This field drives the Sales Booking analysis by time.
A secondary timing field indicates Project Start or other date value that you wish to track.
The Account Manager can enter a Follow-Up Date for the next planned interaction with the client.
Another timing field is automatically calculated by the system and shows when the opportunity last was updated. This is an excellent tool to identify stale opportunities, or real opportunities that are not being followed up on properly.
Each Project belongs to a Sales Funnel Stage expressed in percent, ranging from 0% to 100% in increments of 10%. These values are used to track the Sales Funnel in both tabular and graphical formats.
Each Sales Funnel Stage can be given a value in plain English, like 'Verbal Award', 'Contract Negotiations', etc.
You can quickly filter on different Sales Funnel Stage values to find relevant information.
The WebFunnel supports up to 20 different Forecast Flags, defined by the System Manager.
You can specify whether a certain Forecast Flag qualifies for inclusion in the 'official' forecast. This is convenient for quickly setting filters to view the official forecast values. You can, of course, also manually set filters to include or exclude any combination of Forecast Flags.
Forecast Flags make it easy to simulate different sales scenarios without affecting the underlying sales database. For instance, you can quickly measure the impact of moving your backup opportunities into the official forecast.
It is not mandatory to assign a Forecast Flag to an opportunity.
Every Project has a Summary where the Account Manager can quickly describe the status of the opportunity in free format text. Each entry is date stamped and identifies the author of the entry.
New Summary entries are made throughout the lifetime of the Project. The previous entries are not deleted, but kept to show the evolution of the Account over time.
This is a valuable tool to help the Account Managers track their own estimates of an opportunity. In this way, they learn from their own experience and benefit from the experience of their colleagues. As a result, Account Managers improve their estimating skills over time.
Users can create Events describing customer interactions or other relevant pieces of information for an
opportunity. An example follows:
For each Event, you first see the Event Title, the Date, the Author and the Event Type. Event Types are useful to facilitate filtering operations.
Events can include an explicit hyperlink to a web site or document. In this example, 'Draft Contract' is an explicit hyperlink to the contract document.
Implicit hyperlinks are also handled. Standard Internet and Email addresses are automatically treated as hyperlinks. In this example, the email address to the legal department is recognized as a hyperlink. By clicking on this link, you can immediately send an email to this address.
An interesting feature is the ability to automatically send internal or external emails based on an Event entry. For more information on this feature, please see Create Email Events.
You can assign Tasks to yourself, colleagues or Distributors to help move an opportunity forward. The owner of the Task can easily monitor the progress towards completion.
For more information, please see the Section Tasks below.
Standard price quotations can be automatically generated based on the Deliverables that you have entered for a Project.
A quotation template is used to capture your company logo, special terms and conditions and other criteria.
The quotations are written in HTML for easy access over the Internet. Each quotation is encoded, so that your clients cannot view quotations for other customers.
An example of an automatically generated quote is shown below:
The system automatically makes an entry into a History Log whenever a user changes the forecast parameters of a Project. Similar to the Project Summary, this is an excellent tool to learn about the sales cycle and to improve the accuracy in the forecasts.
The History Log includes all the important values related to a change of an opportunity as shown in this example:
The yellow boxes at the top are used to set filters. In this example, the user has elected to view the History Log for the Account named 'Bigtown'.
Tasks represent a powerful feature to help users focus their energies in the most important areas.
Tasks can be Private or Public, Project related or General in nature.
Powerful Work Collaboration synergies can be achieved by assigning Tasks to colleagues or business partners.
All Tasks have an Owner and an Actor to whom the Task is assigned. If you create a to-do list for yourself, the Owner and the Actor is the same person. Only the Owner can modify the content of a Task. Owners and Actors can both move a Task towards completion.
Tasks have a Start Date, Due Date, Promised Date and Completion Date. The Promised Date is by when the Actor agrees to complete the Task.
Tasks have five levels of priority.
Tasks that are assigned to other people can be accepted or rejected. The person accepting a Task can enter a Promised Date, which is different from the Due Date.
Here is an example of a Task Table:
The navigational bar at the top includes links to alter the completion level from 0 - 100% with a single click.
The right side of the navigational bar features convenient links to Account, Contacts or Project information for the opportunity to which the Task is related.
Tasks, which are related to a sales opportunity, are referred to as Project Tasks.
Project Tasks are public by nature. Users with access to the WebFunnel can view the Project Tasks and their current state of completion. This is a great help in understanding the action items that must take place before an opportunity can be closed.
Tasks, which are general in nature and not related to a sales opportunity, are referred to as General Tasks.
General Tasks can only be viewed by the Task Owner and the Task Actor.
When you assign General Tasks to yourself, you are the only person who can see the Tasks. In this way, you can create your own private to-do lists.
While the Private Tasks are not necessarily work related, they have an impact on the limited time that you have available for all activities. On your Task Summary, the Private Tasks are shown alongside work related Project Tasks. This gives you an overview of all Tasks demanding your attention and you can prioritize your activities accordingly.
You can assign a Task to yourself, colleagues, or to external users like Distributors who have access to the WebFunnel.
The Task Actor is notified via email. He can accept or reject the Task.
If a Task is rejected, you can re-assign it to another person.
The completion stage of a Task is measured in percent in 10% increments.
Tasks can be moved to a different completion level with a single mouse click.
Only the Task Owner and Task Actor can change the percent completion level.
When 100% completion is achieved, the Task is considered completed and a Completion Date is automatically created.
We have concluded in our discussion above that it is often sub-optimal to rely on email messages as the primary communications method for managing your client interactions. However, when properly used, email communications can play an important role. The primary strengths of this communications medium are the ubiquitous availability of email and the ability to 'push' messages to recipients over the Internet.
The WebFunnel provides convenient access to the email function by providing email hyperlinks in the Contacts Tables and Project Summaries. Moreover, email addresses entered in Events text are automatically implemented as email hyperlinks.
When users create Events, they can at the same time automatically send email messages to external or internal recipients. The email messages can be addressed individually or as a group.
Thanks to this feature, three important functions can be created with a single action:
An interesting WebFunnel feature is the Email Trail. It brings structure to an email message, automatically injects the message into the sales database and provides a convenient email trail for the client/vendor exchange of emails in relation to a sales opportunity.
Both the client and the Account Manager can make new entries to the Email Trail directly from their email program. Upon successful entry, the email trail participants receive an updated email trail via email. Conveniently, this interaction is also captured in the sales database.
An Email Trail example follows:
When you assign new Tasks to other users, they are automatically notified via an email message. This is a good example of how the push capability of email can be exploited.
One of the most important aspects of a Sales Funnel program is the ability to analyze and measure the current state of affairs, so that corrective action can be taken on a timely basis. This is tremendously useful, whether the actual results are better or worse than the plan.
The starting point for a meaningful Sales Funnel analysis is to define Goals and Objectives, against which progress can be measured.
The WebFunnel lets you define Sales Bookings and Sales Revenue Objectives on a month by month basis. Quarterly and
yearly objectives are automatically calculated as a function of your fiscal year. This example shows a fragment of the
Set Goals function:
This table also shows the actual sales achievements and the forecast expressed in both absolute values and as a percentage of the targets.
The standard WebFunnel Tables include Contract Values with Total amounts added up at the bottom. You can apply a wide
variety of filters to selectively view the sales results by product line, geography, Account Manager, etc. Here is an
example of a WebFunnel Table:
Please note the navigational bar on top of the table, which includes direct links to the Account, Contacts and Project Details for the selected opportunity.
A large number of graphical reports are provided that provide an instant overview of the sales situation overall, as well as by various categories. The graphs are constructed using the new W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG).
Actual and Forecast Sales Bookings and Revenues are displayed in a line graph plotted against the Sales Targets. The
resolution of the time axis is either monthly or quarterly. In addition to the current Fiscal Year, you can view the
values for last year and next year, as in the example below. Note that the fiscal year for this company starts in April:
A Sales Funnel program is obviously not complete without a graphical representation of the Sales Funnel itself. You
can choose to have the graphs created as a function of the number of deals or the contract values that they represent.
Similarly, you can view the aggregate Sales Funnel for the entire company or apply various filters by time and category.
For example, you can view the Sales Funnel for Account Manager Peter, Mary and Oscar for Product Line ABC with an
expected close date in the third quarter of 2005.
A Sales Funnel example follows:
When analyzing a Sales Funnel it is useful to know how quickly opportunities are progressing towards closure.
With the WebFunnel, you can view the average time that the opportunities have remained in the different Sales Funnel stages.
By applying different filters, you can view the Sales Funnel Dynamics for different Product Lines, Account Managers, Geographies, etc.
Powerful visualizations are extremely useful to quickly communicate key business parameters. In the WebFunnel, Executives can view the current state of the Sales Engine as presented in a Digital Dashboard. This interesting tool is implemented in Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG).
Both actual and forecast values are presented. Different time periods can be selected for analysis. The example above shows a 30-day analysis.
The first small meter shows the number of new customer Events that have been created during the last 30 days. A low activity level in this area will typically lead to a slow down in sales over time.
Next, we see the total value of the actual Sales Bookings achieved during the same period. This meter answers the
important question:
"How well are we doing at this point in time?"
The third meter displays the forecast sales for the same number of days into the future. It is very useful to compare
this meter with the previous one:
"Are we gaining momentum or slowing down?"
Finally, the small meter to the right summarizes recent account activities in terms of Projects or opportunities created. It is always a warning sign when the sales team is unable to create new opportunities at a satisfactory pace.
In order to further enhance the semantic value of the Digital Dashboard, the meters are automatically adjusted to show 'normal' or anticipated values at the top, when the needle is vertical. Like in a real car, higher values are shown with the needle tilted to the right of the vertical line.
An Internet accessible Sales Database like the WebFunnel is an excellent approach to capture customer events, collaborate with colleagues, clients and distributors and to automatically build dynamic sales forecasts.
The 'version confusion' inherent in spreadsheets can be eliminated. Flexible 'what-if' scenarios are supported using Forecast Flags.
Email communications can be greatly simplified and used in a more productive and structured environment.
Detailed Sales Funnels are dynamically created, with all the underlying support data available within the same tool. The results are presented in both tabular and graphical formats.