I\u2019ve noticed in some companies a casualness regarding sales forecasts from their sales team.\u00a0 Heck, I\u2019ve worked for some companies that shared that casualness.\u00a0 Some companies view it as an exercise in Excel gymnastics.\u00a0 Others view it as a coffee klatch activity.\u00a0 One customer of ours had multipliers (<1.0) for certain sales reps since they knew those sales reps\u2019 forecasts were inflated\u2026greatly.<\/p>\n
Here is a news story about a local company<\/a> and a significant change to their forecast.\u00a0 The setup:<\/p>\n Digital River Inc.<\/strong> shares plunged Monday after the e-commerce services provider announced it will lose its largest customer.<\/p>\n Cupertino, Calif.-based Symantec Corp.<\/strong> (NASDAQ: SYMC) notified Digital River on Oct. 9 that it will not extend its e-commerce agreement. That deal, under which Digital River provides a variety of e-commerce-related services to Symantec, expires on June 30, 2010.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Ouch.\u00a0 Most people know that Symantec owns Norton Anti-Virus so that is a big loss.\u00a0 How big?<\/p>\n In 2008, sales of products for Symantec accounted for 24.3 percent of Digital River revenue and sales derived from proprietary Digital River services sold to Symantec consumers accounted for 9.4 percent of Digital River revenue.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Over one-third of their revenue gone.\u00a0 I\u2019ve never been a fan of companies having one customer be so dominant in their revenue stream.\u00a0 And now that one company won\u2019t be!\u00a0 Here is a pristine example of when a sales forecast can be a lifesaver for a company.<\/p>\n Here is the CEO\u2019s explanation to the street (emphasis mine):<\/p>\n \u201cOur company is financially strong, our new business pipeline remains healthy<\/strong>, and sales activity in the software, consumer electronics and business-to-business sectors continues to grow,\u201d he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n As an investor, I would sure like to know what measurements constitute \u201chealthy.\u201d\u00a0 This scenario, losing a large customer, plays out often in the sales world.\u00a0 The companies that can absorb such loses are the ones that know how to secure new (i.e. replacement) revenue from new customers.\u00a0 An accurate sales forecast is the tool that will guide the Chief Revenue Officer to the quickest path for revenue replacement.\u00a0 If I were in that role, I would be doubling efforts on the best short-term prospects on the forecast.\u00a0 If my forecast was little more than notes on a napkin, I would be updating my resume.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I\u2019ve noticed in some companies a casualness regarding sales forecasts from their sales team.\u00a0 Heck, I\u2019ve worked for some companies that shared that casualness.\u00a0 Some companies view it as an exercise in Excel gymnastics.\u00a0 Others view it as a coffee klatch activity.\u00a0 One customer of ours had multipliers (<1.0) for certain sales reps since they knew those sales reps\u2019 forecasts were inflated\u2026greatly. Here is a news story about a local company and a significant change to their forecast.\u00a0 The setup: Digital River Inc. shares plunged Monday after the e-commerce services provider announced it will lose its largest customer. Cupertino, Calif.-based Symantec Corp. (NASDAQ: SYMC) notified Digital River on Oct. 9… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"bgseo_title":"","bgseo_description":"","bgseo_robots_index":"","bgseo_robots_follow":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,9],"tags":[1024,1414,1415,1413,1236,213,34],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5Oho-ym","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2130"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2130"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2130\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2132,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2130\/revisions\/2132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}