Forecast

Each open opportunity is in one category, defaulted from its stage and changed by the rep when their judgement differs from the process:

Category is separate from stage on purpose. Stage says where the deal is in the process; category says what the rep believes about the date. A deal at negotiate with a procurement freeze until next quarter is best case or pipeline, and the manager should be able to see that the rep said so.

A deal carries an annual value and a total value, and the forecast uses one of them. Each quota names its basis, annual or total, and the amount on every deal owned by that rep for the period follows it. A subscription business forecasts and pays out on annual value; a one-time or services business forecasts on total value. The two are never mixed on one submission.

Deals are priced in the account’s currency and quotas are set in the rep’s. The forecast converts each deal at the period rate from the exchange rate table, which sales operations fixes at the start of the period, so a forecast does not move because a currency did. The corporate rate is what the roll-up to region uses.

A quota is a target for one user for one period, by type: new business, renewal or total. Managers set them in draft, publish them when the period plan is agreed, and close them when the period ends. Published quotas are what the forecast is measured against and what the attainment report shows. Quotas roll up the reporting line, so a manager’s number is the sum of the team’s unless operations sets it otherwise.

Once a week, on the day the manager sets, each rep submits a forecast for the current period. Closed is separate from the cumulative open-deal categories:

• Closed: what has been won and validated so far in the period.
• Commit: the sum of deals in commit, which the rep may adjust down with a comment.
• Best case: commit plus the deals in best case.
• Pipeline: best case plus everything else open in the period.

The submission stores the four numbers as they were that week, and a line per open deal with its stage, category, amount, close date, probability and frozen applied exchange rate and forecast amount. That is what makes a slip visible with the week it happened, and what lets the forecast be rebuilt deal by deal for any week of the quarter. Before submitting, the rep works through their open deals and sets the category and close date on each, which is the discipline the system is really enforcing.

Submitted forecasts appear in the manager’s review queue. The manager opens each one and sees the deals behind the numbers with their stage, category, next step and last activity. The manager can apply an adjustment to commit, signed either way, with a comment, and marks the forecast reviewed. The rep’s number and the manager’s adjustment are stored side by side, so at the end of the quarter both can be compared with what closed. A manager who consistently adjusts one rep’s commit down, and is consistently right, has evidence for the next quota conversation.

The manager’s own submission upward is built from the reviewed team forecasts plus their adjustments, and goes through the same review by their manager.

At period end the manager locks the submissions. Locked forecasts cannot be edited and are what the attainment report and the executive read. Because every weekly submission is kept with its lines, the report can show the forecast as it stood at any week against the result.

• My Forecast: this period’s submissions with closed, commit, best case, pipeline and the manager’s adjustment.
• Forecasts Pending Review for the manager.
• Team Pipeline and the Forecast Board, sorted and laned by category, for the review itself.
• Forecast vs Quota for managers and executives, with pipeline coverage of the quota remaining, rolled up through the reporting line.