Forecasting Sales Success

A sales leader told me "Our forecast is always off by 20-30%. I don't know what's real anymore." I looked at his pipeline. Every deal in "proposal stage" had an 80% close probability. I asked him one question: "Has an executive at the buyer's company authorized solving this problem?" He had no idea. Here's the problem: His CRM stages were measuring seller activity. Not buyer commitment. Discovery meant "we had a discovery call." Not "they acknowledged a costly problem." Demo meant "we showed them the product." Not "multiple stakeholders agreed this needs to be solved." Proposal meant "we sent pricing." Not "an executive authorized budget to fix this." So his forecast was always wrong. Because he was tracking the wrong things. Here's what we did: We rebuilt his qualification framework around buyer stages instead of seller activities. The ADVANCED framework: Acknowledged problem Documented issue Validated by team Authorized by executive Narrowed to external Chosen as vendor Established timeline Deal terms finalized These are buyer commitments. Not seller activities. When we ran his pipeline through this framework, reality hit hard. Most of his "80% deals" were actually at 25%. They had acknowledged a problem but nothing was documented. No executive sponsorship. No validation from multiple stakeholders. 𝗪𝗶𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻 𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗾𝘂𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗲𝗿, 𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗲𝗰𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝗮𝗰𝗰𝘂𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘆 𝘄𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 65% 𝘁𝗼 93%. Not because his team started working harder. Because they started tracking what actually predicts if deals close. BTW: When you can forecast within 3%, you can predict your income. You can plan for your family. You can budget for that house or wedding or kids' school. When your forecast is always off by 20%, you're guessing. Your compensation is unpredictable. Your future is uncertain. This isn't just about making your boss happy. This is about controlling your financial future. Track buyer commitment. Not seller activity. That's how you build forecast accuracy. — Sales Leaders! Your sales team doesn’t need more training. it needs a revenue operating system: https://lnkd.in/ghh8VCaf

Founder-Led Sales Bootcamp #13: Forecast like a CRO, not a dreamer Let’s be honest: most early-stage sales forecasts are just…hopeful guesses. “I’ve got 5 deals that feel warm.” “I think one or two should close.” But you can’t afford to guess. You need a system. A number you believe in. One that stands up to scrutiny. That’s where proper forecasting comes in. Not just spreadsheets - but structure. Here’s how to forecast like a CRO, even as a solo founder: 1️⃣ Bucket your deals Use 3 clear stages: Commit – Signed off internally, close is 90%+ Best Case – Strong intent, but still open dependencies (60%) Pipeline – Early-stage interest, no clear signals yet (25%) 2️⃣ Assign probabilities Multiply each deal by its likelihood. A £10k Commit = £9k. A £10k Pipeline = £2.5k. Then total it up. 3️⃣ Weight based on past accuracy If your last quarter closed at 60% of forecast, adjust down. Don’t lie to yourself. Your hiring plans depend on this. 4️⃣ Track conversion rate by stage Discovery → Proposal → Closed. You need to know where deals die, not just where they enter. 5️⃣ Update every week Deals move fast. So should your forecast. A rolling 12-week view will help you spot dry spells before it’s too late. Quick action plan: 💡Build a simple forecast sheet with columns for stage, value, probability, and weighted value. 💡Audit your current deals into Commit / Best Case / Pipeline. Be ruthless. 💡Add a forecast trend line - what did you predict vs what did you close over the last 3 months? Forecasting isn’t just a sales task - it’s strategy.

A sales rep just told me his deal was "90% likely to close this quarter." I asked him when the customer said they'd make a decision. He said "Well, they haven't given me an exact date, but they seem really interested." That's not 90%. That's ZERO percent. Your forecast is a lie because you're forecasting based on YOUR feelings instead of THEIR timeline. When buyers are ready to purchase, they tell you EXACTLY when they're deciding. They have board meetings. Budget cycles. Implementation deadlines. Real buyers say things like… "We need to decide by March 15th because our current contract expires April 1st." "The board meets on the 20th and this is on the agenda." "Our Q2 budget gets locked next Friday so we need to move fast." Fake opportunities sound like… "We're definitely interested." "This looks really promising." "We should move forward soon." Interest is not intent. Enthusiasm is not timeline. I started tracking this with our team 6 months ago. We created two fields in our CRM "Rep forecast date" (when the rep thinks it will close) "Customer decision date" (when the customer said they'll decide) Guess which one is accurate 80% of the time? Now we only forecast deals that have documented customer decision dates with EVIDENCE. "The CFO confirmed they need to decide by June 30th because their current vendor contract expires July 1st." If there's no customer decision date with proof, the deal doesn't belong in your forecast. Your pipeline is probably 60% wishful thinking right now. Stop forecasting hope. Start forecasting facts. — ♻️ Repost this if you've been burned by false forecasts Need help implementing systems that actually track what matters? See what we're doing at Skaled Consulting to help companies get accurate forecasting without the guesswork

Sales forecasting isn’t just about projecting revenue. It’s about understanding what drives revenue. Here are a few examples. (1) Price x Volume I usually don't separate sales into rates and units because of the extensive detail required. Most of my forecasts are all-in sales of price x volume, or rates x units. It's usually 'good enough' and balances accuracy with effort. But you know it's not always appropriate. If you want precision, or scenario modeling, you'll likely need to break these down further. If prices aren't fixed or demand is dynamic, you'll likely need to deliver a more detailed forecast. (2) Include/Exclude Toggles Sales pipelines often contain CRMs with customers at different stages in the sales cycle. Including them, or applying % volume reductions based upon uncertainty, can distort the sales forecast. In my models, I like to include toggles (similar to the checkboxes you see here) that allow for the inclusion/exclusion of sales depending on (a) scenarios, or (b) the stage of the sales process. This lets you easily change your sales forecast without corrupting your formulas. (3) Top-Down Forecasts Not all forecasts can (or should) be bottoms-up. In this example, the company has a huge opportunity with “NFL Confidential” customer. This customer may or may not be landed, which is why there's an include/exclude toggle. FP&A also included macro-level assumptions for the events that will drive sales up or down. It's a top-down estimate, modeled from known business events (the NFL playoffs) from Q4 to Q1. Sales ramp up slightly, then significantly, before they come back down. (4) Customer Concentration This company may be eager to land an NFL team as a customer, as it's both a strategic and financial play. On the strategic side, the company can get greater market exposure. On the financial side, it brings $5.3 million to the top line. But this amounts to 26.5% of total sales, huge concentration. So there are questions to ask: Can the company effectively manage this higher volume? How does this new focus disrupt other operations? Will new roles need to be filled to accommodate the customer? Are different machines and new capex necessary to service the customer? Does the company have the liquidity to obtain raw materials? What timing for deposits and billings allows the company to cash flow? Remember: sales forecasting isn’t just about projecting revenue. It's about understanding the drivers and implications. When sales forecasting becomes a joint effort between sales and FP&A, you get a far more thoughtful planning process.

The Forecast Loop: Why Your Numbers Never Match Reality 🧪 Ever notice how your forecasts miss the mark? You're not alone. Often times when I'm building forecasts for a fast-growing SaaS company, we'll spend weeks building models, only to watch it become irrelevant and stale after just a few months. The solution? Stop treating forecasting as a one-time project and start seeing it as an ongoing cycle of testing and improvement. ➡️ EXPERIMENT This is where the cycle begins. This requires structured testing, not random assumptions: Take a financial assumption and isolate it Change one pricing strategy at a time Adjust a specific operational factor The key is controlling your variables. When testing a price increase, don't simultaneously change your sales commission structure. Keep it clean! ➡️ MEASURE Now comes measurement. This means thorough tracking, well beyond a quarterly P&L review. I'm talking about tracking BOTH financial AND operational results: Revenue impact? Obviously. Customer acquisition cost changes? Critical. Renewal rates affected? You bet. Most companies fall short here - they watch revenue but miss the operational indicators that explain WHY the numbers changed. ➡️ LEARN Learning is comparing what you thought would happen with what actually happened. Launching a new product line? Trying a new acquisition channel? Landing a new partnership? These all involve assumption that require validation. But don't just note the difference - understand why it happened. Was your conversion rate overstated? Did it take longer to ramp up that partner? ➡️ UPDATE FORECAST Finally, update your forecast based on what you've learned. Most companies get this backward - they tweak forecasts to match historical results without updating the underlying assumptions. Instead: Adjust the actual input variables Refine how your model weighs different factors Document what you've learned so forecasts get smarter each cycle === The forecast loop focuses on continuous improvement rather than immediate perfection. What's the biggest gap you've seen between forecast and reality? How did you learn from it? Comment below 👇

Sales Projections: Strategy or Speculation? Let’s be honest — I’ve seen far too many sales projections that look more like wishful thinking than strategic planning. A bold number on a slide — “We’ll hit $1M next quarter.” Everyone nods, the target is set, and the meeting moves on. But here’s the hard truth: A projection without a strategy is just a guess. I’ve learned this the hard way. Early in my career, I witnessed a team miss their quarterly target by a huge margin — not because they didn’t work hard, but because their projections were built on gut feel and blind optimism. No alignment between sales goals and actual pipeline health. No consideration for changing customer behavior or market dynamics. No breakdown of how deals would move through the funnel. It wasn’t a forecast — it was a hope-cast. So, how do seasoned sales leaders project with precision? It boils down to three strategic pillars: 1️⃣ Market-Driven Insights Your projections must start outside your company, not inside. What’s happening in your industry? How are customer priorities shifting? Is there economic turbulence or competitive disruption? Sales doesn’t operate in a vacuum — your projections shouldn't either. 2️⃣ Pipeline Precision A projection isn’t a random target — it’s a sum of its parts: How many deals are in each pipeline stage? What’s your historical win rate? What’s the average deal size and velocity? Bottom-up forecasting — where data, not hope, dictates the number — is the only way to build credibility. 3️⃣ Scenario-Based Planning Smart leaders never project a single number — they project a range: Best case: If high-value deals close faster than expected. Worst case: If key prospects stall or drop out. Most likely case: Where the current pipeline trends realistically point. This isn't playing it safe — it's playing it smart. What happens when you adopt this approach? Your sales team knows exactly what they’re working toward. Leadership has confidence in the numbers. You shift from chasing targets to executing a clear, strategic plan. Because at the end of the day — sales projections aren’t about predicting the future, they’re about engineering it. Would love to hear from my network — how do you balance optimism and realism in your sales projections? Let’s discuss. #SalesLeadership #StrategicProjections #RevenueGrowth #SalesStrategy

Missing your forecast by 12% doesn’t just sting. It screws your entire operating plan. That number doesn’t just drive revenue expectations. It drives hiring. Burn. GTM investments. Board confidence. If you forecast $10M, but hit $8.8M, you didn’t just miss. - You planned for a team you couldn’t afford. - You hired a headcount you couldn’t support. - You built a strategy on fiction. The thing that lots of folks get wrong about forecasting is that it's NOT about being right. It’s about being inspectable. Auditable. Defensible. Unfortunately, most forecast reviews still sound like this: - “Gut says it comes in.” - “We’ve got strong verbal.” - “He’s a good champion.” Hate to say it, but that's more fan fiction than forecast. If you wanna forecast with more confidence than you might have right now, here are some common threads I've seen across some amazing leaders we work with at Sales Assembly: 1. They tie stages to exit criteria - not feels. If “Stage 3” means “Had a great call,” your pipeline is pure imagination. Try to define clear, observable exits: - Budget validated by power. - Mutual action plan accepted. - Economic buyer confirmed - and on calendar. You probably don't need more deals, but what you do need is deal truth. 2. They don’t inspect calls. They inspect deal design. The rep says it’s 80%. But what’s their basis? - Did they test for competitive landmines? - Did they surface the cost of inaction? - Did they hear the buyer’s why now, or just get a next step? A call recording won’t save your number. At the same time, a deal with no downside risk won’t close. 3. They run top-down and bottom-up in parallel. Too many teams pick one: - Rep rollup (bottom-up) - Historical pacing + math (top-down) But it's probably a good idea to blend both AND use the delta to drive inspection: - “Why is this deal showing high intent, but low rep confidence?” - “Why is this commit deal missing CFO involvement?” The gap is the coaching opportunity, btw. 4. They forecast the team, not just the deals. Rep-level forecast confidence is a leading indicator. So track: - Forecast accuracy by rep. - % of commit deals that close within 10% of projected value. - Average deal size variance vs. historical. Because if 60% of your team is over-projecting by 25%+? That ain't optimism...it's more like a headcount problem in disguise. tl;dr = miss your number by 12%, and it’s not just revenue. It’s missed hiring plans. Missed comp. Missed runway math. Don't think about it as just losing Q2. You also lost 6 months of hiring, 18 months of runway, aaaand every ounce of credibility with finance. 😬

“I need to drop my forecast…”. …gulp. Anyone who’s ever carried a quota has said those words to their boss. And we all know what happens next—no one leaves that conversation in a good mood. I still remember interviewing at Cisco Systems during the height of the internet boom, when the stock was splitting two to three times a year. I was already a bit nervous. Then the interviewer asked about my forecasting strategy. At the time, I worked for a large company that forecasted annually—and then tried to back into quarterly numbers. I explained our approach. I’ll never forget the sales leader’s response: “If you had told me we could forecast a multi-million-dollar deal down to the month—let alone the week—with 95% accuracy, I would’ve said you were crazy.” Then he paused and added, “And now I wonder why you’d do it any other way.” I didn’t fully understand that statement in the moment. But after joining the company, I quickly learned he was exactly right. Forecasting discipline wasn’t just a process—it was part of the culture. What I didn’t yet grasp was how critical forecasting really is. When a CEO tells the board, “We’re going to hit our revenue number,” there is no undo button. The entire company—hiring plans, investments, and credibility—depends on the sales organization delivering what it committed to. Which means hope is not a strategy. To forecast a deal down to the week, three disciplines matter most: 1️⃣ Tie the close date to the customer’s decision, not your calendar. If the customer can’t articulate who is signing, when, and why then, the date isn’t real. And if the customer stops engaging – that is a huge red flag. 2️⃣ Inspect next steps, not just stages. Weekly accuracy comes from validating concrete actions—legal review, procurement approval, budget release with specific timelines to back into a close date —not optimistic stage progression. 3️⃣ Pressure-test the deal with “what could stop this?” – and include your boss, your cross functional team, and if the deal is large - your boss's boss. Great forecasts surface risk early. Time truly does kill all deals, so don’t wait to get others engaged if you’re worried. And if there’s no identified risk, you haven’t looked hard enough. If we’re going to commit, we need a system that allows us to deliver what we promised. That’s what great forecasting really is: Not pressure. Not punishment. But trust—earned one accurate call at a time. #OperationalExcellence #RevOps #Leadership

One year at Gong this month. Here's what I'm proud of. We had two problems on my team. And we built our way out of both of them. Problem one: discovery was broken. Reps were jumping to solutions before they understood the problem. Calls felt like demos with questions sprinkled in. We were pitching before we were learning. So we built something simple. Before you talk about your product, map the customer's problem. What's causing it. Who it's affecting. What it's costing them. Then talk about product. We called it Problem-Based Discovery. Simple framework, ran it in 1:1s every week, coached it in deal reviews. Made it the default. Win rate up 5 points. Deal size up 40%. Discovery conversion up 20 points. Then it went company-wide. Problem two: forecasting was guesswork. Everyone had conviction about their deals. Nobody had a shared way to translate that into a number leadership could trust. So we built a methodology. Every deal gets pressure-tested the same way. You work from the deal up to the dollar, not the other way around. I call it Deals to Dollars. Forecast variance dropped to about 3% on average. That one is now going company-wide too. A year of building at scale taught me the best systems make the right behavior easier than the wrong one. When discovery has a structure, reps stop winging it. When forecasting has a language, managers stop guessing. The team gets better without just working harder. Not possible without our Enablement and Ops partners (Fiona NicChoiligh, Deb Averett) And look, everyone right now is asking how to plug AI into their sales motion. The key is ensuring you've built clean systems first. AI doesn't fix a broken foundation. It runs on top of one. That's what I'm most proud of. Not the numbers. The fact that the process outlasts the moment.

Had a great conversation recently with an SVP of Sales running US growth for a business HQ'd abroad. He came up in high-growth cultures where the mantra was simple: more pipeline, more reps, more revenue. Forecast accuracy wasn't required as a core competency — and he was honest about that. So we dug into what it actually takes to build one. Here's the thing I always come back to: there's no silver bullet for accurate forecasting. The tools are better than ever — Clari, Einstein, AI-assisted models built on your own data, call recording and conversational analytics feeding signal into the machine. All of it is real, and all of it helps. But the tools are only part of it. You also need a deep understanding of your own business mechanics: - How long does your sales cycle actually run — not on paper, but in practice? - How many deals open and close within a single period that never appear in your forecast at all? - How often do deals drift outside the expected close period — not lost, just late — and how predictable is that pattern? -What percentage of deals actually close on their initial target date? - And beyond the math, you need deal-by-deal visibility. Especially in mid-market and above — and then you need to do a postmortem after every period. Why did committed deals not close? What did that rep think was going to happen, and why were they wrong? But none of this works without one thing underneath it: process consistency. "Commit" has to mean the same thing to every rep and every manager. "Qualified" can't be a feeling — it has to be a shared definition. Stage gates need to mean something. If the data going in is inconsistent, the forecast will be too — no matter how good the model is. The real breakdown I see most often? Frontline managers. Not because they don't care — they care deeply. But they're trying to keep great reps happy, keep seats filled, and hit their numbers. Pushing on forecast hygiene can feel like pushing on paperwork. They'd rather spend that time on deal coaching. And honestly, so would I — deal coaching is one of my favorite things. But here's the conversation I think needs to happen more often with those managers: In a world largely shaped by PE/VC investment a sales leader's career is tied to forecast accuracy just as much as it's tied to hitting the number. Sandbagging this quarter, stealing from next quarter, missing the call you just gave your board — that's not how you build confidence with an executive team or a sponsor. If you want your managers to truly own the process, they need to understand that boards and sponsors don't care ONLY about hitting quota. They want to see that you understand your business — that the signal coming from the field is reliable enough to make investment decisions with confidence. That's what accurate forecasting actually reveals: operational credibility. The more your frontline leaders understand that, the more they'll take ownership of process discipline.