GlenRoss

Account Executive

Forecasting tips?

Anyone have any tips for forecasting more accurately?

I just moved to manager and forecasting is going to be important. I used to hate when managers were all over me about deals and updates etc.

What has worked for other people in getting a more accurate forecast?

🐱 Off-Topic

16 comments

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CuriousFox

WR Officer

🦊

It's hard since it's a game most of us have to play.

DungeonsNDemos

Big Shot

Rolling 20's all day

Make sure you have a well defined process that isn't bullshit. To elaborate, one company I worked for just moved deals through the CRM pipeline and counted them as 10%, 25%, 50%, 75% depending on if you had done a demo and sent a proposal or not.
In my opinion, forecasting 75% close just because they got sent a proposal is a crappy way to gauge it. Make sure you have built in that it's qualified thoroughly.

Sunbunny31

Politicker

Sr Sales Executive 🐰

That looks like a recipe for off-kilter forecasting and a lot of heartburn.

GreenSide

Politicker

Sales manager

About the same for my company. Really depends on if the deals are smaller and more transactional where the law of averages makes that somewhat accurate. Or if your deals are strategic where that’s a bad idea

DungeonsNDemos

Big Shot

Rolling 20's all day

100% this. Really depends on what your product and ICP are.

MCP

Valued Contributor

Sales Director

This is a weighted 4cast. Basically what u do is take 75% of the value of the deals in the top tier & add 50% of the value from the next & so on. It’s not perfect & doesn’t tell the whole story because of BS deals but it’s relatively accurate.

DungeonsNDemos

Big Shot

Rolling 20's all day

the trouble we would often run into is that in our market you get a lot of shopping around as it was SMB owners. So as an AE I had to be very quick to vet the prospect; the issue is that our CEO never wanted to disqualify anyone so we would be stuck with penny pinchers and dust kickers because our CEO wanted more deals in the pipe.

I left partly because I was tired of wasting my time with deals that were dead from the start.

MCP

Valued Contributor

Sales Director

I totally get that, I’ve been in a similar spot so what I used to tell the founder was I’m the sales guy, you pay me to do these things. Not all leads are good, let alone equal and the best sales people can quickly disqualify someone so I can focus my time on other more valid opportunities.

DungeonsNDemos

Big Shot

Rolling 20's all day

Right! It's not all black and white, but it's tough to have to fight on both ends - against leadership and against unqualified leads.

1nbatopshotfan

Politicker

Sales

Your first quarter or so you’ll need to do a deep dive on everyone’s pipeline to understand what’s real and what’s not. Use this time to understand who you can believe and who you can’t. Good luck!

Blackwargreymon

Politicker

MDR

This is a weighted 4cast. Basically what u do is take 75% of the value of the deals in the top tier & add 50% of the value from the next & so on.

Pachacuti

Politicker

They call me Daddy, Sales Daddy

You need a process independent of you, unless you are the process.
My advice is to always be secretly honest with yourself and optimistically reserved with management

NickRossi

Senior Sales Manager

Hey @GlennRoss, I'm new to Bravado but have been forecasting as a leader for the past 5 years. One tip is to leverage historical data - CRM weighting/assumptions are awesome but can leave a lot of blind spots as you near EOQ. See how your territory/pipeline has performed QoQ and YoY and compare that to your team's rollup numbers. You will get to the point of knowing which of your reps are aggressive/conservative and be able to put your judge on the team number. Deal stacks/reviews suck just as bad as a leader, but they will help you with swing deals that could make or break your forecast accuracy. 50% science, 50% gut!

Beans

Big Shot

Enterprise Account Executive

MEDDPICC - highly recommend using this tactic to get more insight into your deals, highlight red flags etc.

MR.StretchISR

Politicker

ISR

Clashingsoulsspell

Politicker

ISR

I hate interviewing people. But I always default to: why are you leaving? what do you know about us? why do you want to work here?

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