Once Upon a Sales Meeting!

It was an awkward silence in the meeting room "Uproar." John Kowalski, the new sales manager, was not happy with the team's performance. After scribbling something in the notepad, he decided to break the silence,

John: I cannot believe you guys have been working like this. No reports, delusional forecasting, random targets, and no eye on the ball.

Kevin: We followed Richard's orders.

John: Well, Richard is not here anymore, is he?

John walked up to the whiteboard, and wrote in big bold letters: "TARGET - $50 MILLION". He then turned around to see the poker faces of his 6-member team and asked, "Thoughts?"

Kevin: Our last year target was $15 million, and yet we missed that by 20%. This new target of $50 million is almost four times what we did last year. Do you think it is practical?

John: Kevin, we make software for salons and spas. That's a 3-billion dollar industry. I'm asking you to capture less than 2% of that industry. Now, you tell me if that is impractical.

Kristin: But John, with the same team of 6, we'd need a magic wand to achieve that target.

John: Wand, not sure. Magic, well yes. We certainly need the magic of proper planning and reporting. We need to analyze relevant data and make strategies. What does our sales pipeline look like today?

Kristin: I can quickly check the CRM and let you know.

John: Please do.

Kristin (reading from CRM): We have 135 open deals as of today.

John: And what stages are they in?

Kristin: 93 cold, and 42 hot

John: Is that it? What about more granular stages? Those in the demo stage, or proposal stage for instance?

Team looked blank. John decided to continue.

John: Anyway, can you tell me who among you has the highest probability of topping the closures this month?

Kristin: That would be Kevin.

John: Kevin, how much is in your pipeline right now?

Kevin: I am about to close a 200,000 dollar deal, and have few more follow-ups to do.

John: Could you give me your sales forecasting for this month based on conversion probability?

Kevin: Well, if you give me sometime, I could pull that for you.

John did not know how to react. Perhaps, he was expecting more numbers from a team that brought 12 million in sales the previous year.

John: It's alright, Kevin. Team, let me show you how we are going to keep track of our leads and prospective deals going forward.

John projects the following image on screen:

John (continues): We'll have five primary deal stages - New (or cold leads); Talking (or showing interest); Meeting (or Demo); Proposal (or Quote); and finally Closed Won or Lost. This is how we'll prepare our sales pipeline. We'll also map probability percentages in these five stages based on our previous record. If we capture the appropriate data into our CRM in time, we can pull other important reports as well. Let me show you another example. 

Conversion or Sales Funnel report is essential find out where our leads leak in the process, and then tighten the gap. Sales Funnel reports can also be pulled by regions, or lead owners. These are some useful metrics that we could use to streamline our approach. For instance, if we see a low conversion rate for some of you, I can work closely with you to help analyze and improve.. Any questions?

Kristin: John, few of my clients take too long to close and that affects my targets for that particular quarter. Can we also do something to reduce the conversion time?

John: That is an excellent question. It is important to learn about sales cycle time or velocity so that we can set realistic targets for everyone of you. Also, shorter sales cycles would mean more ROI for our team.

Kevin: John, I like to take time with my clients and build relationships with them. That is important because if they like the product and service, they are going to renew their subscription every month, for a longer period. 

John: That's a great point, Kevin. Thank you for bringing this up. To monitor this, let's follow two more metrics - Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR), and Customer Lifetime Value (CLV). 

John walks up to the white board and starts writing MRR formula. 

Net MRR = MRR at the beginning of the month + MRR gained from new customers for the month + MRR change gained from upgrading customers for the month - MRR change lost from downgrading customers for the month - MRR Churn from the month

John (continues): Recurring revenue is the lifeblood of any SaaS business. It’s what makes building a SaaS so appealing. You do not have to worry about one-off sales that may or may not return. If you have a solid product ,and like Kevin mentioned,, build a good relationship with clients, they automatically return for renewal. While new subscriptions validate our sales efforts, the Churn rate l lets us know where we went wrong. 

Kristin: What about Customer Lifetime Value?

John: Customer Lifetime Value is simply the total revenue we make from a single customer over the whole period of relationship with that customer. It's an important metric as it costs less to keep existing customers than it does to acquire new ones, so increasing the value of your existing customers is a great way to drive growth. Marketing team would be interested in this metric as well, as they compare this with Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC), to calculate ROI.

Understanding CLV/CAC generally helps marketers unlock additional budget for their programs. For instance, it can help them determine whether they should be allowed to spend more on acquiring larger customers who'll likely stick around longer and pay more in their lifetime. This is what an “allowable CAC” represents. Allowable CAC is the maximum acceptable amount to pay for a customer. It's essentially a cap marketing team pre-negotiate with the finance team. They can justify a higher allowable CAC if CLV is higher.

Kevin: Sorry to return to where we started, John, but how are we going to divide the 50 million dollar target among ourselves.

John: All the reports, analysis and metrics that we spoke about, will help us set our goals and targets. Let's pull out all those reports from our CRM and come back for our next meeting tomorrow. We'll sit together and work out a target sales plan for each of us according to the insights we gain from reports. Sounds good?

All: Yes John

John: Alright then, see you. Hopefully, I'd get to hear from George, Lisa, Rajesh and Peter as well tomorrow, and not just Kevin and Kristin.

Everyone laughs and leaves the room. John left with a satisfied smile, as he believed he gave his team 50-million reasons to trust the sales reports and work with a plan.

• Topic Participants

• Vinit Tibrewal

  

• Sticky Posts

• As Sales Person, Here are my New Year Resolutions. What are Yours?

  Being a salesperson, I keep learning from my mistakes and have noted a few changes that I need to make in my approach. I take these resolutions going into 2021, hoping to keep it going for as long as possible :) 1. I will not say "Yes, our product has

• Once Upon a Sales Meeting!

  It was an awkward silence in the meeting room "Uproar." John Kowalski, the new sales manager, was not happy with the team's performance. After scribbling something in the notepad, he decided to break the silence, John: I cannot believe you guys have been working like this. No reports, delusional forecasting, random targets, and no eye on the ball. Kevin: We followed Richard's orders. John: Well, Richard is not here anymore, is he? John walked up to the whiteboard, and wrote in big bold letters: "TARGET

• Recent Topics

• Auto-Populating Custom Field

  This is to request a feature enhancement for our invoicing system. We're currently creating invoices with a single item per invoice and have a custom field called "Related Vehicle." We would like the "Related Vehicle" field to be automatically populated

• How can i Customize Delivery Note?

  I need to customize delivery note like change the tittle for language purposes and also include only the balance due

• Delivery note template

  We have some reasonable templates for sales docs but the delivery note one is very limited. It would be nice if we could have the same options as the sales form templates or even create our own by cloning an existing sales template, modifying (ie: removing

• INTERCOMPANIES INVOICING

  Dears , I paid expenses on behalf of our sister company from my cash account , then month End i issued an invoice to the sister company , my question is how to put the expenses GL in the invoices

• Zoho CRM Theme Color?

  I've read multiple articles stating it's possible to change Zoho CRM theme colour (top menu bar) from personal settings menu, however, my zoho has no options for this at all and I've looked everywhere........has this feature been removed? I'm currently

• How can i force the user to select a project when creating an invoice ?

  Hello I tried all the ways that i know , but no way is able to stop creating an invoice without project.

• Sales

  1/ How can I make a discount on invoice exmple : invoice 5,100 le , custmar pay 5000 and I need to make this 100 le as a discount , how can i make it ?! 2/ Is thare any report can make me match my company’s balance with the customer’s balance?

• Include Project Hours when Creating Estimates from Projects

  Hi Currently, in Books, you can create estimates from Projects by inserting tasks that pull both the task and the hourly charge rate. But it doesn't pull the budgeted hours for the task, so you manually have to remember the number of hours for a given

• acc

  Regularly sending statements to customers is an imperative part of many business processes as it helps foster strong customer relationships and provides timely guidance on pay//

• South African Payment Gateways

  Since the "Demise" of Wave many South African users have moved over to Zoho and yet for years users have been requesting Integration with a South African Payment Gateway to no avail. Payfast was the most commonly requested gateway as it supports recurring

• CRM Implementation

  I need to implement Zoho CRM. Is there a useful user manual available to guide me through the implementation?

• Zoho Social integration with Zoho Flow

  Is there any plans for Zoho Social integration with Zoho Flow?

• Marketing 2.0 has been a catastrophe

  Anyone else having significant issues with their link between their CRM and Marketing automation since moving to version 2.0? We had an easy flow for triggering leads in the CRM to journeys in Marketing Automation but now nothing seems to work properly.

• Cannot average "Duration (Time)" from Pick List History Tracking in Reports

  Okay, let's say I have a custom module. In this custom module I have a pick-list named "Status" with "New", "In-Progress", "Completed" values. I also have turned ON pick-list history tracking and chose "Time" to track the duration in (instead of "Calendar

• Customer Statement Template

  Hi. how can i add order number "customer LPO number" in the customer statement. regards

• Authorize.Net Update: Disable Transaction IP Velocity Filter to Avoid Payment Failures

  Update: The Authorize.Net integration was updated on November 20, 2024. To prevent recurring transaction failures, we recommend disabling the Transaction IP Velocity Filter at the earliest. We’re updating the Authorize.Net integration in Zoho Books on

• Need to send a single email to up to 20 recipients

  I want to send a single email to ~16 or 20 recipients. It appears that I cannot do this in Zoho email as it gets flagged as unusual activity. I need to be able to communicate with this group on a regular basis. What am I missing that Zoho doesn't allow

• Whatsapp Limitation Questions

  Good day, I would like to find out about the functionality or possibility of all the below points within the Zoho/WhatsApp integration. Will WhatsApp buttons ever be possible in the future? Will WhatsApp Re-directs to different users be possible based

• Unable to Schedule One-to-One Emails in Zoho CRM

  Hi everyone, I’m using the Zoho CRM Professional Edition and facing an issue with scheduling one-to-one emails directly from CRM. While I can send immediate emails without any problem, I don’t see an option to schedule these emails for a later time. I’ve

• Canvas Detail View Related List Sorting

  Hello, I am having an issue finding a way to sort a related list within a canvas detail view. I have sorted the related list on the page layout associated with the canvas view, but that does not transfer to the canvas view. What am I missing?

• Repeatable Fields/Sections in Zoho CRM

  Hi Zoho Team, We have a module in CRM named "Clients". We would like to know whether it is possible to have a feature enables us to have repeatable sections in our clients' profiles? For example, if we customized a section in the clients' profiles named

• Zoho Analytics: Requests for view access

  Hello, We have a user that might request access to a certain view, report etc. However this request for access is being sent to different admins within the workspace, is is possible to set who the "approver" is of these requests? If not what are the rules

• Boolean Fields in Mail Merge Displaying as Checkmarks

  I'm really liking the new mail merge functionality. It's replaced the Zoho Sign extension for us. One problem I've seen is that boolean operators (i.e. Checkbox fields) in CRM merge as "True" or "False". This looks a little ugly in my final document — is there a way I can get those to display as checkboxes?

• Formula in Sub Form

  Hello - I have created a sub-form and the data is going to be insurance policy information. However some of the policy amounts are based on a percentage of a main coverage. For example, Debris removal coverage is 5% of the main dwelling policy. Is there

• Email alias already exist

  Hello, I'm getting an error message the email alias already exist when attempting to add 2 email addresses. The emails are associated with an account I deleted. I started a new account and need to add them back to get 1 email at each. I have an open ticket

• Migrate emails from a shared mail box to a private mail box

  How is possible migrate a shared mail box if the migration tool require a password, and the shared mail dosent have ?

• Support poor service

  I just wanted Zoho support to give me some more concrete answers. I’m facing SMTP error issues, and they told me that the South American IP was experiencing problems, but they didn’t provide an estimate for when it would be resolved. Now my company is

• Zoho say my domain seems to be already associated with another account

  I created a zoho account for try my domain mail configuration. When I want to add my domain in this page https://mailadmin.zoho.com/hosting?plan=free then this shows an error that is "This domain is already associated with this account a*****n@f*****."

• Incorrect Device Time

  Hi On my windows laptop I can't sign into Zoho mail due to "incorrect device time". I'm in Toronto, Canada. How can this be resolved?

• Get user images by API

  Hi For our internal management software, I want to retrieve user photos via REST API: curl --location --request GET 'https://profile.zoho.com/file?fs=thumb&ID=<zoid>' \ --header 'Authorization: Zoho-oauthtoken <token>' The token has `profile.userphoto.ALL`,

• Depois de 1 ano não consigo receber e-mail

  Consigo enviar e-mails mas não estou recebendo nenhum e-mail isso aconteceu pontualmente após eu completar 1 ano de uso. Me ajudem por favor

• Submitted form URL

  I am using the feature "Include a link to allow respondents to edit their responses" for the first time. This URL is included in the email sent to the user after they press Submit. If a form is Saved, there is a section called Partially Saved Entries

• Function for Emails tranfer from Lead to Deal

  Hi Due to the fact that my Deals conversion needs to be done in 2 ways - depending on the fact if those records already exists or not - resources in fields are different. I am making function control conversation for Leads but I have problem with transferring

• Create a new immigration service- Similar to immigration law software

  It will be good if you can build a new service. Data will be pulled from the employee form. Then automatically users should be able to complete immigration forms like I 129, ETA 9089, ETA 9035 E, G- 28, W4, I 9 PDF forms and then be able to send for signature with Zoho sign. Immigration Softwares like docketwise can be used for ideas. The advantage with this it sits within Zoho people and employees don't have to feed data in another system

• Accessibility in Zoho CRM: Not just a feature—a way to empower

  For instructions on setting up these controls, please check this help document: Configuring accessibility controls. Hello everyone, Today (December 3, 2024), on the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, we begin our journey towards a CRM that

• Zoho Meeting very bad video quality

  Hello, I need 1080p HD on my Zoho Meeting as explained here: Low Resolution/Quality Video (zoho.com) Currently, video quality is lagging with 400mb internet which is not acceptable for my business. My 1080p 60FPS webcam performs well on platforms like

• Contacts with Deals not appearing.

  What: I simply want to see all of the contacts that are tied to an open deal Problem: In Contacts Module > When filtering on Contacts with an open deal, Zoho only shows some Contacts instead of all. Details: More specifically, I should have ~200 contacts

• Auto-sync field of lookup value

  This feature has been requested many times in the discussion Field of Lookup Announcement and this post aims to track it separately. At the moment the value of a 'field of lookup' is a snapshot but once the parent lookup field is updated the values diverge.

• CRM limit reached: only 2 subforms can be created

  we recently stumbled upon a limit of 2 subforms per module. while we found a workaround on this occasion, only 2 subforms can be quite limiting in an enterprise setting. @Ishwarya SG I've read about imminent increase of other components (e.

• Version of Cliq included with Zoho One and Limitations

  I'm confused by the information presented in the application detail page of Zoho One. I'm a solopreneur with a single-seat Zoho One Enterprise license and I need to communicate externally .. extensively. The plan details page suggests channels are limited to 100 members. Whereas the pricing plan comparison page on the Cliq marketing site says 2500 for enterprise level.  If it's 100... that's going to kill my use case as it is my understanding that external customers can only be communicated with

• Next Page