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* Get More Information From Waterfall Charts *

First let me say that I am pleased to be sending you this TechTIP eNewsletter after an extended hiatus. I was fortunate to have one of my former clients offer me a position as Vice President of Worldwide Sales. It was a great opportunity to work for another pre-IPO semiconductor company, Enpirion, Inc. My work there is finished, but if you use POL devices, I suggest you check-out their website. While at Enpirion, waterfall charts were used in many situations. I'll demonstrate an example which was provided by one of our investors, Scale Venture Partners (SVP), and shows Revenue vs Plan, each month for a calendar year. You can see the original Waterfall Chart, which is included in their Board of Directors Template. A sales executive needs to know the Act+Fct performance, in percent, by: month, quarter, and year. That important information is not shown in a waterfall chart. But, a waterfall chart exhibits a declining monotonic function. By using the row, column and offset ability in Excel, we can build a template to capture the data we need. It is much quicker to understand graphical vs tabular data, particularly when trying to analyze comparative data, i.e. Act+Fct vs Plan. In the graph below it is easy to determine that the Act+Fct only met or exceeded the Plan in four of the twelve months: JAN, JUL, AUG and NOV. In the graph below, we have the Act+Fct vs Plan, in percent, for each month. The last piece of information we need to know is the Act+Fct vs Plan, in percent, by quarter and year, and it is shown in the graph below. By viewing these three graphs we can quickly determine that the example company didn't make Plan in the first half, but by exceeding the Plan in four of the twelve months, they were able to meet the Plan in the second half, and for the total year. It is possible to obtain more useful information from a waterfall chart, and when presented in a graphical format, it allows faster comprehension of comparative data. For more information on presenting Data and Information I recommend, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, by Edward R. Tufte. Special thanks to Rob Herb and Andy Vitus at SVP for their support and cooperation during my time with Enpirion.

Sales	Marketing	Training
• Forecasting	• Corporate Presentations	• PowerPoint
• Customer Engagement Models	• Product Briefs	• Excel
• Dashboard / KPI / EIS	• Short Form Catalog	• Word
• Pareto: 80/20 Rule for Sales	• Creating Price Models	• Outlook
• Commission Plans	• Corporate Intelligence (SWOT)	• ACT! and GoldMine
• Territory Coverage	• Organizational Balance	• Workshops - Full and half day
• Due Diligence Review	• Targeted Emails / eNewsletters
• Sales Force Automation(SFA)	• Literature Fulfillment
• INCOTERMS Explained	• Demand Printing
• Understand VMI PLans	• List Rental / Database Hygiene
• Negotiating: Beyond Price	• Mail Automation Compatibility
• SPC / Quality Topics for Sales	• Managing Image Libraries