Finally monitor the health of the business in real-time and don't lose sleep over it.
It's four weeks from end-of-quarter and it's been a crazy roller coaster so far. You've had a lot of new hires, your competitor just came out with a new product, and the team has been hard at work to close business. You've also been lacking sleep from answering 1 a.m. emails or 8 a.m. calls from your CRO asking for a report on the state of the business. As you're talking with your CRO, he asks the inevitable question, "How are we doing this quarter?" But what he's really asking is:
- What number should we share with Wall Street?
- What's our VP calling and how does that compare to the team's call?
- How are we doing on linearity?
- Do we have enough pipeline?
At this point, if you're ready, at best you pull up a stale report with pieced-together information from various sources. At worst, you haven't had time to really dig into it, and you have to shoot off an email to some poor analyst who's going to spend the next few hours crunching numbers to help answer the question. This is where Clari can swoop in and save the day.
At Clari, we're focused on the opportunity-to-close (OTC) process, which includes deal inspection, pipeline management, and forecasting. This provides us with the CRM data, artificial intelligence (AI), and forecasting that are all needed to pull together a coherent response, and that response is in the form of Clari Pulse.
The Breakdown
Let's break down the question, "How are we doing this quarter?" At the end of the day, it comes down to a few, more precise, key questions:
Have we closed enough thus far in the quarter?
Every organization is at least somewhat concerned with linearity. Even though what matters at the end of the quarter is how much has been closed, if you've only closed 30% of quota by day 60, that's a sure sign of tough times ahead. It's important to keep a good pace throughout and avoid banking on too many deals closing in the last week of the quarter (even if Clari does help you reduce slippage).
Do we have enough pipeline to hit our number based on historical conversion rates?
This question is about how much pipeline is left and where that puts you for the end of the quarter. Seeing a week-over-week view will give you a good sense of when the pipeline might have taken a big hit, but more importantly, the AI-driven Clari projection can give you an immediate sense of whether or not you have enough pipeline based on how much your team historically converts. If that projection line is trending downwards, then that's a sign that the pipeline is emptying out faster than it has in previous quarters and you might need to take corrective action.
What are the different forecast calls across the organization and are they converging?
Finally, what it all comes down to is the VP's call and whether or not that jives with all of the other data you see. Knowing that your VP is calling a number that aligns closely with the team's forecast and has been converging with the AI-driven projection will give you the confidence you need to answer the question, "How are we doing this quarter?"
Success!
So the next time you receive a 1 a.m. email or an 8 a.m. call from your CRO asking for a report on the state of the business, you'll only be a few clicks away from painting a more complete and accurate picture than ever before, and get a good night's sleep!
Learn more about Clari Pulse and all of the other benefits that Clari has to offer.