Forecast without your reps
Forecast without your reps
The RevOps way to predict your pipeline
Hey, Toni from Growblocks here! Welcome to another Revenue Letter!
This weekly email is my way to share knowledge and build a community of people who love to learn more about growing revenue in a data-driven and scientific way.
Anything in particular you want to hear my thoughts on? Drop me an email, and I might use it in my next article.
What would a sales forecast look like without any input from reps?
Sounds like a ridiculous question, right?
The way most of us look at the sales forecasts in B2B goes like this:
What’s in the pipeline? What looks likely? Which deals sound like they are weak? What’s our confidence level in each deal?
Each question relies on reps and their perspective.
You can use a lot of different methodologies to try and manage the chaos.
But then you still need those reps to put in all of that information accurately and timely.
And sure, there is probably some AI tech that is trying to solve this right now.
But what if there was a cleaner way?
What if you could use those forecasting sessions simply to make your reps better?
Instead of grilling them and pushing them and asking for pinky promises to get to “a” number you can report to the CEO?
What if you didn’t even need your reps’ inputs?
Sounds like a fantasy, right?
Let me explain.
The way I see it, there are 3 kinds of forecasts out there.
The Rep-based forecast
The AI-based forecast
The RevOps forecast
1. What does the Rep think?
This is your standard sales forecast, like I explained above.
I talked about the problems with this approach a few weeks ago.
But it boils down to 2 things:
They completely rely on inputs from reps.
And they focus on what is in the late stages of the pipeline right now.
What is missing:
They don’t account for deals that are either:
Super early in the pipeline - simply too early to call
Or deals that will be created during the quarter and still might close
The result?
You spend hours grilling your reps to get a number that is missing 50%, even in the best of cases.
Which then really means that they are really only accurate 2-3 weeks before the end of the Q.
So that’s the standard way of doing things out there.
Isn’t that a bit insane?
2. The AI-based forecast
In this forecast, you look at your pipeline and compare it to other deals in the system.
It usually takes 6-12 months for the AI to really kick in.
It basically needs to learn from 2-3 sales cycles of data to map how “your” deals are behaving.
It totally makes sense, but it’s an annoying limitation for the here & now.
Once that is done, they also only look at your existing pipeline - early and late stage.
And of course, if reps forget to update the status of a deal, the AI will still think it’s there.
I have seen this many times, AE forgets to close lose a deal (it’s already gone from his spreadsheet ;)) - but the AI still bets on it.
But even with perfect input, what is still missing though … are deals that aren’t created yet.
Neither the rep nor the AI know about these.
So what you will get is a MUCH better way to manage and improve your reps.
And you have AI calling BS on deals - that you as a manager never would have caught.
But… it still isn’t actually giving you a reliable forecast until the very last few weeks.
3. The RevOps forecast
I believe this is the forecast every team should have.
Teams big or small. Many deals or few. SMB or Enterprise deals.
All it needs is the realization that you are operating in a revenue factory.
This means not everything can just change overnight.
So you can rely to a large extend on the past to tell you something about the future.
You know that a Demo Request Inbound from the US will behave in a certain way.
You will know that an Outbound deal in the Enterprise Segment will behave in a certain different way.
You will know what Leads and Deals you have created and are likely to create going forward.
All of these bits of information can help you to put together a sales forecast that is accurate from day 1 of the quarter.
And when I say day 1, it really means you can do it even long before the quarter even starts.
The beauty of this approach is that when the accuracy of this forecast drops - 2-3 weeks before the quarter end - is typically the exact time frame when traditional forecasting methods start working.
What I have done in the past:
Work with the RevOps forecast to navigate until week 8 or 9 of the quarter
Sit in forecast sessions with sales and focus on helping them, not on grilling them
Start looking at the sales forecast as input starting week 8 or 9 to gain accuracy
Open next Qs sales forecast halfway through the current quarter, to see what needs focus
All of this without relying on expensive AI that needs a year to ramp.
Or waiting and hoping for accurate rep-input to the forecast.
Oh, and you can use the same method to forecast your entire GTM, not just sales.
Meaning you can say goodbye to newbiz tunnelvision.
The problem with this forecast?
The sheer amount of data can get messy to manage.
But we can help you with that.
P.S. If you want to see Growblocks’ answer to forecasting for yourself, we still have spots in our final live demo of the year. Book a spot at Growblocks.com or email me, and I can answer any questions you have.