Abstract

Improving business forecasts is a major goal of many companies because of its strong positive impact on future performance and potential competitive advantages. Even though sales managers have been called to serve as a profound base for business forecasts from a theoretical perspective, this premise has not been subject to empirical testing to date. Addressing this research void, the authors analyze under which conditions sales managers’ business forecasts are reliable and when not. The authors conducted a cross-industry field study including two measurement points with 180 high-ranking senior sales managers. Results show that managers’ forecast accuracy fundamentally depends on contextual moderators. Sales managers predict future business situations 2.5 times more accurate when they exhibit a long firm-specific experience and high confidence-levels in their own forecast. Furthermore, a comparably long sales cycle improves forecast accuracy. Conversely, sales managers may make considerable misjudgments if the before mentioned conditions are not met.

摘要

改进业务预测是许多公司的主要目标，因为它对未来业绩和潜在竞争优势产生了强大的积极影响。尽管销售经理被要求从理论角度作为业务预测的深刻基础，但迄今为止，这一前提尚未经过实证检验。针对这一研究空白，作者分析了销售经理的业务预测在哪些条件下可靠，何时不可靠。作者对 180 名高级高级销售经理进行了一项跨行业的实地研究，包括两个测量点。结果表明，管理者的预测准确性从根本上取决于上下文调节器。销售经理预测未来的业务情况 2. 当他们在自己的预测中表现出长期的特定于公司的经验和高置信度时，准确度提高 5 倍。此外，相对较长的销售周期提高了预测的准确性。相反，如果不满足上述条件，销售经理可能会做出相当大的错误判断。