Forecast

A forecast is your best estimate of how much the team will sell in a period, with the reasons written next to it. The target is what the owner wants. The forecast is what the open deals and your past numbers say is likely. Three versions, cautious, base and good, show how wide the uncertainty is and which deals decide the result.

The inputs come from the CRM: active deals with an amount, a stage and a decision date in the period, plus your past win rate and sales cycle. The cautious version counts only late-stage deals with a next step agreed with the customer. The base version adds deals where the customer is actively choosing. The good version adds the remaining open deals that could still close in time.

For example, $12,000, $19,000 and $26,000.

Update the forecast once a week, right after the pipeline review. The review closes dead deals and fixes dates, so the forecast stands on a cleaner list. Each seller marks their own deals; the head of sales checks the marks against the CRM.

The owner gets the forecast in the weekly report, assumptions included. Then they can decide in time: hold or add advertising, allow a discount to close a deal this month, wait with a hire. Example (invented numbers): a $20,000 target, a $19,000 base and a $12,000 cautious version say the month depends on a few deals.

Read it next to pipeline coverage and win rate. Coverage says whether there are enough open deals. Win rate says how many usually close. The forecast puts deal names and dates on that arithmetic. At the end of the period, compare it with the result and write down which assumption failed.

• Forecasting the target. A forecast that always equals the plan tells the owner nothing. Build it up from the deals and show the gap openly.
• A total with no deals behind it. Nobody can check a single number. List the deals in each version, so the owner can ask about the ones that carry the month.
• Counting deals with no next step. A deal nobody has contacted for weeks goes in the good version at most. Move it there, or close it at the pipeline review.
• Changing the forecast without a reason. If the number drops from one week to the next, write which deal moved and why. The owner then reads a reason instead of getting a surprise.

By Friday, the head of sales lists every active deal with a decision date this month. Mark each one cautious, base or good, using one written rule per version. Add up the three totals and write two lines of assumptions underneath. Send it to the owner with the weekly report, and agree to compare it with the result at month end.

Which numbers to check every week, with one definition for the whole team.