ABCABC CompanyRevScoreboard · the ten things
ABC Company is fictional. Figures come from a real sales organization; every name has been changed.
08 of 10 · The Diagnostic

Forecast Integrity

A forecast built from checkable facts, not confidence.

1The question

Is the forecast evidence or optimism?

2Why it matters

Most forecasts are confidence polls. A deal advanced on optimism looks identical to one advanced on evidence, right up until the quarter ends.

Scored against checkable facts, the two come apart: either the economic buyer has been met or not; either a signing date has a paper process behind it or not.

The pipeline already carries honesty tells: close dates in the past, deals pushed again and again, everything bunched on the last day of the month.

What the research says

Rule-based combination of evidence beats holistic judgment. A forecast built from verifiable components beats a poll of confidence.

Grove et al. (2000), Psychological Assessment 12(1), 19–30 · doi.org/10.1037/1040-3590.12.1.19

At a large enterprise software vendor, salespeople gamed the timing of deal closure and agreed to significantly lower prices in quarters when they had a financial incentive to close, costing the vendor 6–8% of revenue.

Larkin (2014), Journal of Labor Economics 32(2), 199–227 · doi.org/10.1086/673371

Rating scales anchored with concrete, observable behavior reduce ambiguity between raters. Each fact is scored 0–3 with written anchors.

Smith & Kendall (1963), Journal of Applied Psychology 47(2), 149–155 · doi.org/10.1037/h0047060
BEvidence grade B. One strong study, or an established framework in wide use. Strong method grounding around a practitioner framework (the eight facts) that stays craft.
What it doesn't settle. The eight-fact framework itself is practitioner craft with no peer-reviewed validation. What the research supports is the principle of checkable components.

3What to collect, every time

Input A number the CRM can't give you: the plan, quotas, working weeks, spend.Field Does the field exist, is it required, and who fills it in?Definition Your own definition of a thing we then compute against.Prediction Your answer now, in writing, checked against the record later.
Definition
How the forecast is built: who submits, who rolls up, who signsEvery hand it passes through is a place it changes.
Definition
What “qualified” means, in one sentence, from two peopleIf the sentences differ, that is the finding.
Field
Close-date history (push count)Starts the day field history is turned on.
Field
The eight facts: metrics, economic buyer, decision criteria, decision process, paper process, pain, champion, competitionMost CRMs have none of them as fields.
Prediction
Last quarter's commit versus actual, in dollarsForecast error is the number this exists to shrink.

4How it's computed

  1. Count open deals with a close date already past, and their dollars.
  2. Count deals pushed two or more times.
  3. Measure how much of the pipeline is dated on a month-end.
  4. Color every open deal by a written rule, and score it against the eight facts where fields exist.

5What ABC's record shows

Forecast honesty tells

Open deals as of 2026-07-23
Close date already past
32
$215,748
Pushed 2+ times
39
$1,074,112
Dated on a month-end
50%
top date: 2026-09-30 (56 deals)
Business case delivered
3%
Deal board
Red 158Yellow 93Green 16

Red: close date past, pushed 2+ times, or no activity in 30 days. Green: a dated next step ahead and activity in the last 7 days. Yellow: everything else.

The eight checkable facts: is there a field today?
FactField todayFilled
MetricsAmount; Average Health Savings51%
Economic buyerContact title (proxy only)52%
Decision criterianone—
Decision processnone—
Paper processHealth census submitted (one step only)27%
Identified painnone—
Championnone—
Competitionnone—
Forecast category in use
Omitted
163
Pipeline
104

No deal is marked Commit or Best Case. The category field exists; the forecast doesn't use it.

16 of 267 open deals are green. Five of the eight facts that would make a forecast checkable have no field at all.

6What a sales leader does Monday

  • In the forecast call, ask for the fact, not the feeling: who is the economic buyer, and how do you know?
  • Move every past-due close date to a real date or close the deal.
  • Build the eight facts as 0–3 fields with written anchors.

7The founder version

Building your first CRM? Do this now, so you can answer the question in a year.

  • For every deal you call likely, write down who signs and what happens between yes and signature.