Sales
Definition
Sales forecasting is the process of predicting how much revenue will close in a future period (next quarter, year). Methods include: weighted pipeline forecasting (opp value × probability), commit/best-case/worst-case categories, rep-submitted forecasts with commit/upside breakdown, and regression models on historical pipeline data.
Key points
- Weighted pipeline: simple but relies on accurate probabilities
- Commit forecasts: rep's high-confidence subset of pipeline
- Forecast accuracy is itself a metric — teams track actuals vs forecast over time
- Roll-up forecasts aggregate per-rep submissions up to the VP
Example
Team submits: commit $800k, best case $1.2M, worst case $600k. Historical accuracy runs 5-10% above commit typically.
Stop stitching tools to track this
CRM, communications and operations share one database here, so the numbers this term describes are a dashboard rather than a spreadsheet.