S&OP for Sales: Connect Your Sales Funnel to Your Demand Plan
As a sales professional, you know that you serve as your company’s “ear to the ground.” As you interact with customers and prospects, you gain invaluable insights into the dynamics of the marketplace: Where are new opportunities arising? What is the competitive landscape? What are the intractable challenges that companies face that your product can solve?
The sales force knows better than anyone about what - and when - customers will buy.
As a result, you represent the first line of responsibility in demand planning for your product. If your sales forecast is too low, you’ll encounter product shortages and lost sales.
If your forecast is too high, it will lead to valuable capital tied up in excess inventory.
A reliable sales forecast drives operations to create an accurate production schedule.
But you know that’s more difficult than it sounds. While CRM tools like Salesforce.com have emerged to support the sales process, the translation of sales funnel information into meaningful demand planning data remains largely missing—let alone being able to actually get a view of actuals versus your plan integrated with the forecast.
You need a planning tool that surmounts this hurdle by enabling you to extract, understand, and act on critical data from your sales funnel. Enter Steelwedge.
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