CRM and forecast

CRM rules the team follows and a forecast review you can run every week.

Deals are updated irregularly, so the forecast cannot be trusted

Use it when: You have the numbers, but the CRM is incomplete and the forecast changes every week.

The numbers are in the CRM, and nobody believes them. A deal gets updated when someone remembers it. Required fields sit empty, so the forecast you give the owner moves every week.

Any CRM will do, and so will a plain spreadsheet. The guide sets required fields for each stage, says what to do when a deal stalls, and builds a weighted forecast with stage weights taken from your own closed deals.

With a handful of open deals that you know by heart, you can wait. The kit does not set up your CRM for you, and it promises no accuracy: the forecast is only as good as your records.

Monday is a good day to open Start here and then the first chapter of CRM you can trust. That chapter opens with what to do in your first 15 minutes.

Next, perhaps on Tuesday, cut the CRM policy in Word down to the fields and stages your team will actually fill in. The guide spreads the rollout over four weeks, so the rules can come in one at a time.

By the end of the week, Friday if it suits you, hold the first weekly forecast review: 30 minutes, one page. You go through data quality, the deals in doubt, the forecast in three versions (cautious, base, optimistic) and decisions with a name and a date. The numbers come from the Forecast summary tab of the Deals and forecast spreadsheet.

Keep the filled sheet. A week later you hold that forecast up against what actually closed.

Questions