★Understand the real objectives
★ Know the situation
★ Be in control
★ Carry out analysis using appropriate tools
★ Present findings logically

From a sales perspective, it’s all about the pipeline. Obviously, the objective is to keep advancing deals. How and where you allocate resources (make decisions) depends on intimately knowing your pipeline. I’m biased, but I think the proper analytic tools give you all you need to manage the pipeline. If you know what’s changed for any particular deal, what has worked for similar deals in the past, which sales people have been effective for which kinds of deals, then you know all you need to know, you are in control, and you can easily present findings to make and back up the decisions you make to allocate resources and try to move particular deals.