Once you have estimated where a contributor to sales success currently is, you must now put that contributor in motion. Certainly snapshots are valuable, but they don’t tell you where the contributor has been or where it is going. Consider psychographics. To say that the mood of the consumer is slightly ‘‘negative’’ about the economy doesn’t help much. Only by looking at previous data and trending out the changes can you determine whether this current mood is a growing negativity or an improvement in attitude. Once you have a history-to-present trend for any contributor, you can project that trend out into the future. You can also incorporate future alternative events that may have an impact on your plans. There are two excellent, and easy to apply, trend projection techniques that you can use with your sales team. Remember, the more diverse the input, the better the results.

Scenario Planning

This tool is based on the concept that there is more than one possible future. A skilled planner must uncover the most likely scenarios and find the environmental indicators that announce which one seems to be the unfolding future. Start by having your diverse planning team brainstorm current trends and develop a reasonably clear picture of a future business environment about five years out. Next, have the team identify several significant indicators that demonstrate that the environment is truly moving in the imagined direction.

Scenario 1: Five years from now, the business environment will be stronger than today, with very large and very small competitors driving the markets based on control and management of information that support a focus on a ‘‘market-of-one’’ approach.

Indicators for Scenario 1: Sustained improvement of major economic indicators, reduction of medium-size businesses, increase in venture capital funded start-ups, focus on smaller and smaller market segments, increase in data mining and manipulation software, increased electronic customer interface channels based on individual preferences, blurring of the distinction between sales and marketing organizations due to the need for greater ‘‘customer intimacy.’’

Once your team has created a single vision for the future and defined some of the indicators that demonstrate that your future world is truly unfolding, you’ve only completed part of the exercise. You must now place those indicators in logical sequence and create a timeline map for the five-year period.

Don’t relax too soon. You now need to create three to four alternative, yet realistic and attainable, futures. They need to be different from your first ones, and each will have its own set of indicators.

Scenario 2: Five years from now, the business environment will be weaker and more chaotic than today, with major industries moving to offshore locations resulting in loss of intellectual capabilities and technological leadership.

Indicators for Scenario 2: No improvement in the major economic indicators, increasing loss of service industry jobs, increase in global competition, new technology standards being driven and set by countries such as China and India, decline in foreign-born student enrollment in American colleges, and shrinkage of previous industry leaders based in the United States.

The final result is that you can now begin to construct your plans around a trended future, know what indicators to watch for, and be prepared when different events require you to alter your plans.

Simulation Planning

This form of ‘‘future’’ trending is somewhat similar to the scenario process, but it segments out the primary drivers for analysis before combining them for some specific period in the future. Let’s start by taking another look at your eleven identified drivers that impact sales success:

1. Technology (hardware and/or software)

2. Globalization

3. Competition

4. Customers

5. Demographics

6. Lifestyles

7. Psychographics (consumer sentiment)

8. Firmographics (business sentiment)

9. Economy

10. Regulatory practices

11. Business practices

Break your planning group into eleven individual teams with each one focusing on only one of the drivers listed above. It is best to select members for a particular team who are subject matter experts in the field. For example, bring some IT folks into your session to concentrate on technology or some government affairs personnel to focus on regulatory practices.

Separate the groups into different planning locations and ask each to determine where their driver has been, where it is currently, and (if the trend continues) where it might most likely be in five years.

Finally, bring the teams back together again and overlay the drivers to create a vision of some specific time in the future. You and your team will be amazed at how clear an image develops. The pace of change is speeding up to the point where the future will not be a bigger, faster, shinier version of today.

Although you are not fortune-tellers, you must try to grasp a view of tomorrow to do better planning today