Module 05Forecasting
A sales forecast your manager can defend, built from five dashboards and no guesses.
Sales forecasting dashboard setup inside the CRM you already pay for. We configure weighted or category forecasting, build the five dashboards a sales manager actually opens on a Monday, and print the definition of every metric on the dashboard itself. For teams of 3 to 150 seats, run from Mission Street in San Francisco, delivered remotely across the United States.
Dashboard 01 / Forecast versus quota, weighted by stage
Price, stated before the call
What forecasting dashboards cost
Each dashboard is priced on its own, $600 at the simple end and $1,100 when it needs calculated fields, a snapshot history or data from a second object. Most teams take four or five. Five dashboards at those rates come to $3,000 at the bottom of the band and $5,500 at the top.
These are bands. We quote in writing after a 45-minute scoping call, once we have seen how clean your stage and close-date data is.
Two models, pick one
Weighted versus category forecasting
A weighted forecast multiplies each open deal by the probability attached to its stage. A $40,000 deal sitting at Proposal with a 50% stage probability contributes $20,000. Add every open deal and you get one number. It is mechanical, it needs no judgment from the rep, and it is only as good as the stage probabilities, which is why we set them from your own last four quarters of closed deals rather than from the CRM defaults.
A category forecast asks the rep to put each deal in a bucket: Pipeline, Best case, Commit, Closed. The manager reads Commit as the number the team is signing up for. It carries the rep's judgment, and so it carries the rep's optimism too.
Teams under 15 seats with short cycles usually do better on weighted. The volume is small enough that a manager knows every deal anyway, and the probabilities do the arithmetic. Teams with enterprise deals over 90 days and a real commit call usually want category, with the weighted number shown next to it as a check. We configure one as the forecast of record. Running two official forecasts is how a Monday meeting turns into an argument about which one is true.
Both depend on the close date. So the close date becomes mandatory at Proposal and nowhere before, and a deal whose close date has already passed drops out of the forecast until someone moves it. That rule alone usually removes 10 to 25% of a pipeline's stated value on day one. Managers hate it for a week.
- Deal value
- $40,000
- Stage
- 05 Proposal
- Stage probability
- 50%, set from closed history
- Weighted value
- $20,000 counted
- Rep category
- Best case
- Category value
- $40,000 in Best case, $0 in Commit
- Close date
- Required from this stage on
The manager pack
The five dashboards a sales manager actually opens
We have seen CRMs with 60 dashboards and a manager who opens two. These five cover the weekly forecast call, the one-to-ones and the quarter review. Anything past five needs a named person who will act on it.
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01Forecast versus quota
Where the quarter lands
Closed won, forecast of record and quota for the period, by rep and by team, with a snapshot line taken every Monday at 06:00 Pacific so you can see how the number moved week over week.
Opened before the forecast call. Built from the model above and nothing else.
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02Pipeline coverage
Is there enough to close
Open pipeline for the next two quarters divided by remaining quota, split by stage. A coverage ratio under 3x for a team closing 25% of qualified deals is a hiring or prospecting problem, not a forecasting one.
Opened at the start of each month.
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03Stage conversion
Where deals die
The share of deals entering each stage that reach the next one, over a rolling 180 days. This is the dashboard that tells you the Demo stage loses 60% of deals and the Proposal stage almost none.
Opened in the quarter review.
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04Cycle time
How long each stage takes
Median days spent in each stage for won deals and for lost ones, side by side. Lost deals that sat in Negotiation for 40 days while won deals took 9 is a signal worth a coaching conversation.
Opened in one-to-ones.
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05Hygiene
What is lying to the forecast
Open deals with a past close date, no activity in 14 days, a missing amount or no next step. One list per rep, sorted by value. When this list is empty the other four dashboards can be trusted.
Opened every morning by the reps, not the manager.
Your forecast is only as honest as the close date. So we make the close date mandatory at Proposal and nowhere before.
Stage sheet, rule 04
Printed on the dashboard
Metric definitions, written down once
Every chart gets a short text panel beside it with the formula and the rule behind it. If the VP of sales and a new rep read the same number two different ways, the dashboard failed. These are the defaults we start from; your stage sheet can change them.
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M01
Stage conversion
FormulaDeals that entered stage N and later entered stage N+1, divided by all deals that entered stage N, in the window.
RuleA deal that skips a stage counts as converted through it. Deals still open in stage N are excluded, not counted as lost.
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M02
Cycle time
FormulaCalendar days from the date a deal entered Qualified to the date it was marked Closed won or Closed lost. Median, not mean.
RuleMedian because one 400-day zombie deal drags a mean by weeks. Deals reopened after close restart the clock.
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M03
Win rate
FormulaClosed won divided by closed won plus closed lost, counted from Qualified onward, by close date.
RuleLeads that never reached Qualified are not losses. Counting them turns a 30% win rate into 4% and nobody learns anything.
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M04
Pipeline coverage
FormulaOpen pipeline value with a close date inside the period, divided by quota minus closed won for the same period.
RuleDeals with a past close date are excluded. Unweighted, so it reads as a raw ratio against your own win rate.
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M05
Weighted pipeline
FormulaSum of amount multiplied by stage probability for all open deals closing in the period.
RuleStage probabilities are reviewed every quarter against actual conversion. A probability nobody has checked in a year is decoration.
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M06
Stale deal
FormulaOpen deal with no logged activity, stage change or amount change in 14 calendar days.
RuleSame 14 days the stale-deal alert uses, so the dashboard and the reminder never disagree.
Who builds it and where
Built inside your CRM, owned by you
We build with the native report and dashboard tools of the CRM you already license. No separate BI tool, no extra seat to buy, no export job that breaks when someone renames a field. If your CRM genuinely cannot calculate something you need, we say so at scoping and tell you what it would take elsewhere.
Dashboards come after the pipeline. If the stages are still eleven columns nobody can tell apart, a forecast built on them just charts the confusion faster. In that case the work starts with pipeline design and the stage sheet, and duplicate accounts get merged through data cleanup before a single chart is drawn.
- Every metric carries its definition in a text panel on the dashboard.
- Stage probabilities set from your closed deals, reviewed quarterly by your admin.
- Weekly snapshots so forecast movement is visible, not reconstructed from memory.
- Documented in the admin guide handed over at training.
Process
From audit to the first Monday call
Two weeks for most teams, measured from the day we get read access to the CRM.
Before you book
Questions managers ask about forecast dashboards
Our CRM already ships forecast dashboards. Why pay for new ones?
The shipped ones assume default stages and default probabilities. If your pipeline was customised at all, the defaults are measuring something that no longer exists. We rebuild on your stages and your history.
Can you build a dashboard for every rep and every region?
We build one dashboard with filters for rep and region. Twelve copies of the same dashboard means twelve places to fix a definition when it changes.
Who is this not for?
Teams that want a board-deck revenue model mixing CRM, billing and finance data. That is BI and finance work and we do not take it. Also teams with fewer than about 30 closed deals in the last year: there is not enough history to set honest stage probabilities, so we would recommend a category forecast and a hygiene list and stop there.
What if the numbers look worse after you are done?
They usually do, for about a week. Past-due deals leave the forecast and coverage drops. The pipeline did not shrink. It was never that size.
Who maintains the dashboards after launch?
Your admin, from the admin guide. If you have no admin, the monthly retainer at $1,150 for 10 hours covers definition changes and quarterly probability reviews.
Scoping call
Book a scoping call
Tell us your CRM, your seat count and which meeting the numbers are for. A person replies during business hours, Pacific time.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94105