Predict Sales Like Dr. Strange with Aviso’s Scenario Forecasting

In an iconic scene from Avengers: Infinity War, Doctor Strange, played by Benedict Cumberbatch, views 14,000,605 future scenarios to identify how the Avengers can defeat Thanos.

Imagine if sales leaders could explore various "what-if" scenarios, considering internal and external factors, to safeguard sales forecasting and ensure revenue goals are met with a prepared mitigation plan. 

Introducing Aviso's Scenario Forecasting—Your sales crystal ball to get insights on the changes in the pipeline and identify potential deals that can help bridge the gap to the pipeline target.

Unlike purely number-based forecasting, scenario planning prepares for the future by imagining different possible outcomes and paths to those outcomes. It combines events, cause-and-effect, and decisions to improve flexibility and risk readiness. This approach helps in long-term planning by considering uncertainties and unknown risks.

How Aviso's Scenario Forecasting is Unique

1. Dynamic Scenario Visualization and Analysis: The chart shows key metrics like Scenario Total (the sum of all deals in the scenario), Gap to Plan (the difference between the plan and scenario total, ensuring the gap isn't negative), and Scenario Health (based on the gap to plan). Each bucket's Deal Total is displayed to scale, providing a clear visual representation of each scenario's impact. The system highlights and automatically updates the status of "Won" and "Lost" deals since the last review.

Benefit: Sales leaders get a clear visual understanding of their sales pipeline's current state and potential outcomes, enabling quicker, data-driven decisions to optimize sales strategies.

2. Flexible Scenario Management: This feature allows the creation, editing, duplication, and deletion of scenarios. When you click "Click new scenario," a pop-up opens where the user can enter the scenario name and a brief description and create it. Scenarios are listed in descending order of last update, ensuring the most current information is at the forefront. In addition to out-of-the-box scenarios like Deal Level Forecasting, Best Case, and Worst Case, sales leaders can create and review custom scenarios like Segment and Discounts.

Benefit: Sales leaders can swiftly adapt to market changes and internal strategy shifts, maintaining relevance and effectiveness in their forecasting efforts. Managing scenarios flexibly ensures that strategies align with the latest market conditions and organizational goals.

3. Scenario Sharing for Effective Collaboration: Scenarios can be shared with specific team members, with customizable access privileges (Edit, Read Only), enhancing secure, strategic collaboration. By default, scenarios are private, with sharing capabilities enabling targeted collaboration.

Benefit: This fosters a culture of collaboration and strategic alignment, allowing sales leaders to ensure that all team members are informed and working towards common objectives, thus enhancing team cohesion and effectiveness in meeting sales targets.

4. Customizable Deal Buckets: This feature allows sales leaders to categorize deals in scenarios and adjust deal amounts without changing original values. Users start with a default "Won" deals bucket and can add or modify deals across buckets, impacting Scenario Total and Gap to Plan. Multiple buckets can exist in a scenario. Each bucket has colors, and the buckets in each column correspond to its bar chart color. 

Benefit: Sales leaders gain precision in forecasting by prioritizing deals and tailoring strategies with real-time data. This leads to more accurate forecasts, enabling strategic adjustments and improved sales outcomes.

5. Actionable AI-driven Recommendations: Aviso offers AI-generated insights and recommendations for each bucket, such as identifying deals at risk and suggesting the next steps. Recommendations are based on a thorough analysis of forecast and pipeline data. These insights would help users forecast a bucket by forecast category appropriately.

Benefit: Sales leaders receive actionable insights that support strategic decision-making, helping them proactively manage their sales pipeline. This enables focusing on high-priority actions, mitigating risks early, and uncovering opportunities to improve forecast accuracy.

6. Run-Rate Bucket: The run-rate bucket feature in Aviso's Scenario Forecasting enables sales teams to project future sales based on the ongoing performance of current deals, specifically focusing on those with recurring revenue patterns such as subscriptions or renewals.

Benefit: This precise functionality aids sales leaders in identifying reliable revenue streams, which is essential for optimizing sales strategies, managing team targets, and ensuring consistent achievement of sales quotas in the face of variable market conditions.

Conclusion

Aviso's Scenario Forecasting offers tools that enhance sales forecasting through dynamic visualization, scenario management, collaborative sharing, customization of deal buckets, AI-driven insights, run-rate monitoring, and updates on scenario changes. These features allow sales leaders to predict sales outcomes accurately by considering future scenarios, adapting to changes quickly, fostering teamwork, and making data-informed decisions. 

The integration of AI provides actionable recommendations, improving forecast accuracy and strategic planning. This tool is crucial for sales leaders because it enables effective pipeline management, risk mitigation, and the identification of opportunities, directly contributing to achieving sales targets and organizational goals. Investing in Aviso's Scenario Forecasting is a strategic move for sales leaders focused on enhancing forecasting precision and responsiveness in a dynamic market.

Interested to know more? Speak to our product expert today.