Once Upon a Sales Meeting!

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.


      Zoho Campaigns Resources


        • Desk Community Learning Series


        • Digest


        • Functions


        • Meetups


        • Kbase


        • Resources


        • Glossary


        • Desk Marketplace


        • MVP Corner


        • Word of the Day


        • Ask the Experts


          • 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

          Zoho CRM Plus Resources

            Zoho Books Resources


              Zoho Subscriptions Resources

                Zoho Projects Resources


                  Zoho Sprints Resources


                    Zoho Orchestly Resources


                      Zoho Creator Resources


                        Zoho WorkDrive Resources



                          Zoho CRM Resources

                          • CRM Community Learning Series

                            CRM Community Learning Series


                          • Tips

                            Tips

                          • Functions

                            Functions

                          • Meetups

                            Meetups

                          • Kbase

                            Kbase

                          • Resources

                            Resources

                          • Digest

                            Digest

                          • CRM Marketplace

                            CRM Marketplace

                          • MVP Corner

                            MVP Corner




                            Zoho Writer Writer

                            Get Started. Write Away!

                            Writer is a powerful online word processor, designed for collaborative work.

                              Zoho CRM コンテンツ





                                ご検討中の方

                                  • Recent Topics

                                  • Side scroll bar missing from "new editor"

                                    The "new editor" simply lacks a side scroll bar. Unable to navigate long notes without using the keyboard. Bad upgrade... (using web version)
                                  • Zoho Desk MCP doesn't expose all functions

                                    Hello, I'd like to be able to draft (rather than send) ticket replies using Claude Cowork. However, the Zoho Desk MCP doesn't currently offer that, despite it being available in the API (https://desk.zoho.com/DeskAPIDocument#Threads#Threads_DraftEmailReply).
                                  • Zoho Community Digest - July 2026 | Part 1

                                    Hello everyone! Keeping up with everything across the Zoho ecosystem is a lot, so we're bringing back the Zoho Community Digest, now weekly. Each week we round up the need-to-know announcements from the Zoho Community Forums, four editions a month, so
                                  • Canva Integration

                                    Hello! As many marketing departments are streamlining their teams, many have begun utilizing Canva for all design mockups and approvals prior to its integration into Marketing automation software. While Zoho Social has this integration already accomplished,
                                  • Feature Suggestion for Zoho Social: Auto-reply to Comments or Keywords

                                    Hi Zoho team, I'd like to suggest a very specific feature that would be extremely helpful for customer engagement: the ability to automatically send a reply to comments on posts — either all comments or those containing specific keywords. For example,
                                  • Bring more clarity to your blueprints with color-coded transitions

                                    As your hiring processes evolve, blueprints naturally become more detailed. When multiple transitions connect different stages, it can take extra effort to identify approvals, rejections, reviews, and other actions at a glance. With this enhancement,
                                  • Zoho CRM gets a new email compose and lot more

                                    Dear Customers,  [UPDATE October 21, 2021: We have started opening these features to some of the customers already. And, it will be available to all the customers before November 2nd Week, 2021. Sorry for the delay caused]  [UPDATE February 21, 2022:
                                  • Create modules using natural language prompts

                                    Hello all, We’ve introduced a new enhancement to Zia that allows you to create custom and team modules in Zoho CRM using plain language prompts. Why this enhancement? Creating a custom module traditionally involves multiple steps—choosing field types,
                                  • Automatic Matching from Bank Statements / Feeds

                                    Is it possible to have transactions from a feed or bank statement automatically match when certain criteria are met? My use case, which is pretty broadly applicable, is e-commerce transactions for merchant services accounts (clearing accounts). In these
                                  • How emojis shape customer conversations

                                    World Emoji Day is celebrated on July 17. Did you know that this date was inspired by the 📅 calendar emoji, which shows July 17 on most platforms? What started as a detail in the emoji's design has turned into a global celebration of these tiny emoticons.
                                  • Custom Button Creation from Layout Editor in Zoho CRM

                                    Hello All, Buttons in Zoho CRM act as triggers that perform a specific action when clicked. Zoho CRM includes a set of system buttons that help you carry out common actions with a single click. Beyond these, your organization can create custom buttons
                                  • Displayed sample tracking for multi branch setup.

                                    We have multiple branches and one of the biggest challenges for us to be able to track if a particular item is in display or not. I am shooting in the dark but I am wondering if there is a solution for the following : Each product used for display is
                                  • Using IMAP configuration for shared email inboxes

                                    Our customer service team utilizes shared email boxes to allow multiple people to view and handle incoming customer requests. For example, the customer sends an email to info@xxxx.com and multiple people can view it and handle the request. How can I configure
                                  • Introducing Bulk Attachment Download from List View

                                    We're excited to introduce an update to attachment management in Zoho Recruit that lets you download attachments associated with selected records directly from the List View page of any module. How do I download attachments in bulk? You can now select
                                  • Advanced Group Settings: Customize and manage your email groups in Zoho Mail

                                    Email groups in your organization often require more than basic configurations to function effectively. With Zoho Mail's Advanced Group Settings, administrators can configure and manage policies, notifications, and more with greater precision. This gives
                                  • "code":3001 ["Failed to update data."]

                                    I would like to seek your expertise - I might be wrong on my approach also.. I highly appreciate your advice. 1 problem remains is when a new row was added on the existing one [from another form that trigger upon Successful form submission ], it gets
                                  • CRM gets location smart with the all new Map View: visualize records, locate records within any radius, and more

                                    Hello all, We've introduced a new way to work with location data in Zoho CRM: the Map View. Instead of scrolling through endless lists, your records now appear as pins on a map. Built on top of the all-new address field and powered by Mappls (MapMyIndia),
                                  • Workdrive on Android - Gallery Photo Backups

                                    Hello, Is there any way of backing up the photos on my android phone directly to a specific folder on Workdrive? Assuming i have the workdrive app installed on the phone in question. Emma
                                  • Auto sync Photo storage

                                    Hello I am new to Zoho Workdrive and was wondering if the is a way of automatically syncing photos on my Android phone to my workdrive as want to move away from Google? Thanks
                                  • List of Mail Merge Templates via Deluge

                                    Hello, Is it possible to get a list of the mail merge templates I've created in CRM within a custom function? I want to retrieve them and put them in a dropdown list but all I get is a scopes error! Can anyone see where I'm going wrong? Is this even possible?
                                  • Feature Request Improve parent-child relationship visibility

                                    Hi team, The Parent-Child ticket feature is great, but I've struggled to see the relationship between tickets when using ticket list views. It would be a great quality of life enhancement for users if child tickets were nested under parent tickets in
                                  • Displaying only unread tickets in ticket view

                                    Hello, I was wondering if someone might be able to help me with this one. We use filters to display our ticket list, typically using a saved filter which displays the tickets which are overdue or due today. What I'd really like is another filter that
                                  • Is there provision to charge the attendees to join the webinar?

                                    We want to host some webinar of public interest and want to charge them to participate in this. Does this feature in-build in the application? Offcourse, we will be having Razor pay account activated for these purpose.
                                  • Desktop app doesn't support notecards created on Android

                                    Hi, Does anybody have same problem? Some of last notecards created on Android app (v. 6.6) doesn't show in desktop app (v. 3.5.5). I see these note cards but whith they appear with exclamation mark in yellow triangle (see screenshot) and when I try to
                                  • Don't send customer email when creating a ticket

                                    Hi Is there an easy way to stop the system sending an email to the customer when we manually create ticket.
                                  • Connecting a contact with the deal + Emails not showing up under Deals

                                    Hello. I have two problems. Im not sure if the problem is due to level of my subscription - Im on Proffessional plan. 1. I have a JotForm connected with ZohoCRM which automatically creates a contact and a new deal based on form submission. That is done
                                  • Accessing GDPR Data Source metadata for workflows and Zoho Analytics

                                    Hi everyone, We have GDPR compliance enabled in Zoho CRM, which has added the Data Source section within the Data Privacy tab for Leads and Contacts. This section shows useful information such as: Original creation source, for example Zoho Forms Form
                                  • Tiktok

                                    When will Tiktok be added to the Zoho Social Platform?
                                  • Zoho Mail iOS app update: Spam Controls & Sender Verification

                                    Hello everyone! We are excited to introduce spam control enhancements in the Zoho Mail iOS app update. Let's dive into what's new. Spam Alerts in Mail Preview : Mail preview now shows warning alerts for emails identified as potentially harmful, helping
                                  • Mise à jour de Zoho Books – France

                                    Chers clients, Merci pour votre patience et votre soutien continu. Avec les évolutions réglementaires à venir en France nous introduisons de nouvelles fonctionnalités dans Zoho Books pour les clients français. Ces mises à jour ont été conçues pour répondre
                                  • Admin Logging in as another User

                                    How can a Super Admin login as another user. For example, I have a sales rep that is having issues with their Accounts and I want to view their Zoho Account with out having to do a GTM and sharing screens. Latest Update (27th April 2026): With the early
                                  • Zoho Books API: Bulk update thousands of records using Node.js with OAuth refresh, retries and resume support

                                    Hello everyone, During Zoho Books implementations, one common challenge is updating a large number of existing records. The current options are usually: Update records manually from the UI using Mass Update (with limited batch size). Update records one
                                  • SalesIQ's Summer '26 Release: For The Moments That Matter

                                    Every customer journey is made up of moments. The moment someone discovers your business. The moment they need help. The moment you decide to reach out. The moment a simple chat turns into something more. And the moments that continue long after the conversation
                                  • CNIL - Suivi de Pixel

                                    Bonjour à tous, À la suite de la nouvelle recommandation de la CNIL sur les pixels de suivi dans les e-mails, savez-vous si Zoho Campaigns permet : de conditionner le suivi des ouvertures au consentement de chaque contact ; de proposer un lien permettant
                                  • Customer/Vendor Portal session duration - can it be extended?

                                    Hi all, We'd like to know how long the login session lasts for the Customer/Vendor Portal in Zoho Books, and whether there's any way to extend it (either through settings or via support/API). Right now this is causing a pretty poor experience for our
                                  • Accessible & Customizable User Governance in Zoho Projects!

                                    As teams expand and collaborate with multiple external collaborators across projects, keeping control of user access to project data becomes a challenge. Mismanaged access can cause accidental or unauthorized edits, data leaks and lack of accountability.
                                  • Bulk deleting Zoho CRM records using Deluge, COQL and CRM API

                                    Hello everyone, During CRM implementations, data cleanup is a common task, especially after testing, migrations, imports, or integration development. The Zoho CRM UI allows deleting records in batches of 100, which is not practical when dealing with thousands
                                  • CNIL - Suivi de Pixel

                                    Bonjour à tous, À la suite de la nouvelle recommandation de la CNIL sur les pixels de suivi dans les e-mails, savez-vous si Zoho Campaigns permet : de conditionner le suivi des ouvertures au consentement de chaque contact ; de proposer un lien permettant
                                  • How to View Part Inventory and Warehouse Location When Creating a Work Order in Zoho FSM

                                    Hi everyone, We’re currently setting up Zoho FSM and would like to improve how our team selects parts when creating a Work Order. Right now, when we add a part or item to a Work Order, we can select it from our Zoho Inventory list but we don’t see any
                                  • Zoho Sprints - Q2 Updates for 2026

                                    Improve your agile project management experience with the newly released capabilities in Zoho Sprints. This quarter we've shipped a few new features and enhancements that are built around smarter planning and execution tools, tighter integrations, and
                                  • Next Page