Performance analysis in forecasting 

Nothing makes sales reps happier than knowing that they're on track to achieve or even exceed their targets, because—let's be honest—while sales is tough and competitive, at the same time the sense of fulfillment one gets as they get closer and closer to their targets is unparalleled.

Forecasting in Zoho CRM is a great way for businesses to set up targets and help everyone across your business do their best to meet these targets. Zoho has added a few powerful tools so your sales team can slice and dice your sales performance. Let's take a quick look at all the new tools at your disposal for better forecasting!

• Performance trends - Users can see what their current achievements are compared to what their targeted achievements should be. They can even see the future trend of what their performance might look like as well.

• Achievement comparison - Your sales reps can compare their achievements to see their growth on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.

• Compare across forecasts - Your sales team can even compare their targets, achievements, and open deals across different forecasting periods to see how their performance has evolved.

• User performance page - Your reps now have a dedicated page to track their individual performances for a particular forecasting period, along with a complete breakdown of different forecasting metrics and performance data.

Custom forecasting categories  

When you're setting up your forecasts, one of the most important factors that illustrate your targets and achievements are the deals in your pipeline—and in particular, your open deals. Previously, your team could categorize open deals into three categories to make it easier for the system to calculate your forecasts:

• Pipeline - For deals that are still deep in the sales process

• Best case - For deals that have the highest chances of closing

• Committed - For deals that are simply awaiting closure

On the other hand, closed deals fit into two categories:

• Closed won - For the deals you've won and closed successfully

• Omitted - For the deals that you've lost

But if you feel that in your business process there are deals that don't fall under any of the above categories, you now have the option to create two custom categories. Additionally, you can even change the color that represents each of these categories (except closed deals). These new categories and the updated colors will be reflected across various locations, including forecast creation, target achievement reports, forecast performance reports, and user performance reports.

Keyboard shortcuts 

Back in the 1980s, a man named Larry Tesler revolutionized how we worked with computers with his chief innovation: keyboard shortcuts for the cut, copy, paste, and undo actions. Imagine our world today without these shortcuts to help us navigate the numerous documents, text files, applications, and software we work with.

Zoho realize the importance of shortcuts like this and the quality of life they bring to the software in which they're available. Now you, too, can create a number of custom shortcuts with single keys or a combination of two or more keys for various actions inside Zoho CRM, like creating tasks, sending emails, adding notes, opening the settings menu, and more.

Navigate and work inside CRM with ease using your own custom keyboard shortcuts.