Many companies regularly experience wild fluctuations in their revenues. During one quarter, new offerings are selling faster than proverbial hotcakes. But in the next quarter, the sales force can’t seem to give those same products away. “It’s either feast or famine,” is the all-too-familiar refrain. To exacerbate matters, these fluctuations are often unpredictable as evidenced by the countless companies that miss their revenue projections, unleashing the wrath of Wall Street. Many corporations have watched their stock price plunge because of a missed sales target. And bad sales projections also wreak internal havoc. Few things infuriate the manufacturing division more than ramping up the production of an item that only ends up sitting on shelves.
Of course, every sales cycle has some degree of volatility. A big customer could go bankrupt or a major deal could fall through because of management changes at the client’s firm. Conversely, sales of a new product could suddenly skyrocket because of a serendipitous endorsement. And there are certainly seasonal fluctuations and many other factors, including customer budgets, that affect the sales cycle.
Aside from these, there’s another type of volatility that many executives seem to think is some kind of natural law. At the beginning of every quarter, sales tend to falter; at the end, they often surge. This continuous roller coaster can be a huge problem when big deals fail... To read the complete article, login or sign-up using the form below.
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