Sales Bachelors

Here we see how to forecast sales, or “12-month rolling forecasts.” These are due every month, by the first day of the month. Management looks at a staggered forecast report that shows how the forecasts have changed, from one month to the next for the entire year. And they can see how a department actually performs and compare this to the forecast numbers. And where we see we’re really off, we can adjust in the future so we can predict better. It’s important to be able to keep forecasts accurate. This way we can know what our cash flow is and make good decisions, for example, whether we need to hire another salesperson, or whether we need to raise or cut budgets. We’re starting with a new salesperson in this video. Randy has been with the company for 2 months, and so his sales numbers and predictions will be a lot more volatile. In Odoo, you’ll go to Sales … 12 Mo Rolling Forecasts. You can either use the default filter, with which you’ll only see your own forecasts, or search by salesperson for someone else. If you’re new, you may need to rely on others’ numbers to make an educated guess, particularly about the fluctuation in sales volume over the year. In the video, for Randy, you’ll see that for each month Randy has forecast for both American Stone and Star Stone since he will be making sales for each company. Here you’ll see we made an educated guess. Randy we predicted would make $15,000 in sales as a new sales pro in November. As contractor sales kicked in, in December and January, we believe his sales would hold at $15,000. We predicted sales would start picking up starting in February. In this example, we open the November report, and then for the next month, December, we duplicate the report so you don’t have to start completely over every month. Just update the start and end dates. The title will automatically update. Since this is a 12-month rolling forecast, you should have complete the upcoming month, until the current month you are in, for next year. After you’ve built up sales for a year, you can have last year’s numbers to work off of. And after you complete the new month, you can delete the oldest month from a year ago, and keep only 12 line items, one for each month. Click to add a line, enter the new start date (first day of the month) and end date (final day of the month) on the row (first two columns), and DO NOT HIT TAB. Your screen will lock up and you’ll have to start over. You need to click to advance to the field where you’ll enter to update your forecast number. Watching the video, you’ll see how Toby guesses the seasonal increases and decreases in sales. Forecasting is not a sales goal. This is not a stretch goal, or what you want, this is the money that you think will come into the company. If we have a huge anomaly in the last December, say, where we had a $40,000 sale, you don’t need to match the record for the following year, simply because you want management to look favorably on your numbers. It’s more important to be accurate. While your sales forecast is somewhat a guess, particularly for a new salesperson, it’s less so when you are working with customers and know with some level of certainty what will come in. Think about the jobs you’ve got in the pipeline, what the timelines are, and what the likelihood is of them going through. You can and should change this any time there’s a change. Examples include you’ve earned or lost a big job, or a job got pushed back or up. You’ll enter anything that will affect your numbers. In the video, we see on Nick Benson’s 12-months forecast, that Toby updates the forecast from $110,000 to $115,000 because while there are only 4 days left, Nick’s current sales are close to the forecast, and he has a new job that’s come in that he believes will update the forecast. To make the change, you’ll click the arrow next to the right of the forecast figure, and in the pop-up, enter the updated amount in the Planned Amount field, then click the Update Forecast button. Automatically a note at the bottom of the page will register that you made the change. Finally when you have all of your months done, you’ll come up with a yearly number. So, now click Save, and then you’ll confirm. You can also look at forecasts as a way to figure out what you want to make personally. You’ll look at the total sales you’ve forecast over the year, take the average margin, and then you can come up with what you’ll make. If this is a lower number than you want it to be, you can estimate more, but then you’ll need to work backward to figure out what you need to do to make those sales.

See the Scribe in External Links for the step-by-step process on how to see mass email results in Odoo

Mileage reimbursement is available for those employees who periodically, or routinely use their personal vehicles for company business, and as such have a monthly allocation in their job description for it. These employees include, but are not limited to: Sales personnel who regularly make outside sales calls that requires driving to a customer project site or office location Office personnel who are asked to run errands for the Company such as making bank deposits or picking up supplies Personnel who travel to/from quarries For a visual of this process, see the Scribe in External Links (bottom of this page). On your Odoo employee agreement, on the Benefits tab, you will see a line item that reflect the monthly amount you are allowed for mileage. This amount is also in the language of your job description. Reimbursement Request Log In External Links below, you will find a Google spreadsheet you can use as a reimbursement request form. Make a COPY on your personal drive for use. In the mileage log, include: Date of travel Beginning mileage - Mileage Out Ending mileage - Mileage In Total miles traveled Business purpose of the trip Companies/Individuals visited on the trip Submission Submit an HR Expense in Odoo at HR > HR Expenses, and attach a copy of the spreadsheet (External Links). You can submit as needed, so long as the total does not exceed your monthly cap. Deadlines Submit your expense within 2 weeks of the end of the week or month when the business travel occurred. Submit once a calendar month, for miles that accrued during that month. Except under extenuating circumstances, if you fail to turn in a request for reimbursement for more than 30-days after the business travel, no reimbursement will be made. Reimbursement Rate The reimbursement rate for all employees of the company using their personal vehicle for company use is: $0.55/mile This rate is subject to review on a periodic basis. Company reimbursement is not intended to take into account all of the elements included in the IRS mileage reimbursement guideline. As a traveling employee, you may be eligible to further reduce your taxable income using the difference between the standard IRS deduction and the Company.

All sales personnel and managers are responsible for providing excellent customer service. Our customers reach out to us in many ways, including our online chat function. All sales persons and managers are responsible for monitoring the chat feature, and responding to customer inquires as they come in. How to join the live chat queue: 1. Select the 'Sales' tab in Odoo. 2. Scroll down the left menu panel and select 'Live Chat'. 3. From the Live Chat sub-menu, select 'Channels'. 4. This will open up any live chat channels the company is currently using. Select the channel you wish to join. 5. Select the 'Edit' button at the top of the channel. 6. Select the 'Add' button under the "Operators" title. 7. Type your name into the search field, and press enter. 8. Click the check box next to your name. 9. Click the 'Select' button. You have now been added to the live chat to be eligible to receive customer inquires via chat. Once a chat is routed to you, it is as if the customer has walked into your location to ask you a question, or as if you have answered a customer phone call. Promptly reply to the customer. If you are not the best person suited to help the customer, inform the customer that you will immediately seek assistance. You can simply add another employee to the chat by inviting them to the chat, or by applying the @ sign to their name (ex: @Dan Thomas) in the text field as you reply to the customer. Applying the @ sign will alert the employee that they have a message. If you are not getting an immediate response from another employee, inform the customer that a Sales Professional will contact them ASAP, and get their contact information. If a customer does not want to provide their information, provide them instead with the direct phone number to the store nearest them. Now, chat notifications arrive in your Discuss panel in Odoo. A customer chat may be routed to you when you are logged into Odoo. You will not receive a notification of a chat when you are logged out, and you will not receive a notification of a chat when you have been inactive in Odoo for more than 30 minutes. You can remove yourself from the chat feature, but clicking the "x" on the box by your name. Good luck! Now give excellent customer service!

by Mike Shultz and John Doerr Book Review by Dan Thomas 11/14/2014 In my career I have studied Zig Ziglar's Secrets of selling, Spin Selling by Neil Rackham, and most recently, Action Selling by Duane Sparks. Each of these sales methods were very successful in their time, and I learned a lot from them. However, today’s customers are evolving and to continue to serve these new customers who are generally educated about products in a way customers of previous generations could hardly imagine, our sales methods need to evolve as well. The new method is truly a “next-generation” evolution, and to be a top performer in today’s selling marketplace you have to master both the skills of the past and a new set of skills. Insight Selling is the sales skillset and methodology aimed at serving today's educated customers. I have to be honest, I didn’t get much out of the first half of the book, Insight Selling, but I really enjoyed reading the second half of the book. I think it took me half the book to realize that Insight wasn’t just going to be another method telling me to throw out all the old training I had invested in and start over with their new method. Once I realized this, I became a lot more open to gleaning what insight I could from the text. As I pondered on my own experiences selling, I found many of Shultz and Doerr’s claims about customers to be true. Customers are more educated, they are interacting with traditional sales forces much later on in the process, and many of the products they buy have become commoditized. I have personally wondered what to do about this and how I should prepare myself for the same trend taking over in my industry. Thankfully, Shultz and Doerr have thought about it much more than me and they have shared their insights throughout their work. One of the things I liked that Shultz and Doerr recommend was to be an insight seller you need to move ahead of the traditional sales cycle. We have tried to do the same thing in our business selling stone and landscaping supplies but I think we’ve missed the mark. We have been trying to work with Architects for the last couple years with limited success. Mostly our efforts marketing to them have involved us buying lots of lunches and telling architects our company spiel. I felt sheepish when Insight Selling specifically pointed this out as a poor means for sales success. Instead, Shultz and Doerr teach that we should work with Architects to become their expert partners and collaborators. Our efforts to sell to our contractor customers haven't been much better. After reading Insight Selling, I’m going to ban our standard sales line: “Do you have any projects we can bid for you?” Instead, Insight Selling teaches that we should be building relationships of trust, such that when a stone project comes up they are coming to us asking for advice and recommendations. Insight Selling breaks down the sales process into three main categories: Connect, Convince, and Collaborate. Previously our sales efforts stopped after convincing the customer to use our products. Moving forward we are going to have to move to the Collaborate phase much more often with our customers. For Architects, this would mean working with them to understand what stone would best work to express their clients’ aspirations. For Contractors, this would mean helping them design and learn methods of installation, or new uses for stone they haven’t attempted before. Near the end of Insight Selling, Shultz and Doerr outline the profile of an insight seller. The profile is made up of skills, knowledge, and attributes needed to excel at selling as well as the problems and implications when a seller is lacking in a key area. Some of these should be used for hiring, but most all of them should be used as a part of a continual training and assessment program. I am really looking forward to using these attributes and competencies to update our hiring practices, as well as how we assess salesperson potential. Insight Selling ended with a number of mistakes companies make when implementing sales training. (I found it peculiar that a sales program included a chapter about why sales training programs fail.) In our company we have definitely under-invested in sales training. We have gone through the “train and then don’t support” cycle for more than one training program. Moving forward, I want to get our company to start budgeting a certain dollar amount every year for sales training and improvement. I think the insights, studies, and models delivered in this book will help us well on our way to becoming a sales company in the 21st century. Note: Action Selling is part of our training program for American Stone, and you'll find this module in our eLearning Series.