Why RevOps Leaders Should Use Forecasting To Foster Accountability

What if forecasting wasn’t just an exercise done in silos but a resource that could keep teams accountable and aligned?  

With a RevOps approach to forecasting, you can much more accurately gauge the health of your organization on the whole — all while building team alignment and cohesion. 

In this blog, Salesloft’s Revenue Operations Manager, Jake Platt, explains how RevOps leaders can use forecasting to go beyond predicting pipeline. 

He shares how forecasting can show teams how their efforts contribute to the larger picture,  making it easier to adjust expectations, work toward the same targets, and boost overall accountability.

Using forecasting to address risk and opportunity 

One of the reasons forecasts from RevOps are so valuable is that they allow leaders to assess and adapt strategies in real time. 

Even if your forecasts aren’t where you want them to be, you’re in a position to be transparent and proactive. These are the building blocks of accountability. 

According to Jake, there are two key opportunities for RevOps to keep teams accountable to high-level goals.

First, you can take action to course correct when things aren’t going well. The earlier you identify risk, the faster you can identify why targets aren’t being met. With that knowledge, you can quickly take action to solve the problem before the end of the quarter or even the month. 

Jake continues, “This could mean reallocating resources, bringing in extra support from leadership, or ramping up training and coaching to ensure you have enough pipeline coverage to set yourself up for success.” 

The second opportunity is to identify parts of the business that are performing better than expected, and then allocate resources to accelerate them or duplicate their success. Everyone benefits when one team’s success becomes a tool to adapt company-wide strategy so that big wins are more than just outliers. 

Accuracy breeds confidence 

Whether you’re a RevOps leader or a meteorologist, you know a forecast is only as good as the sum of its parts. The more accurate you can make your forecasts, the more you can do with them. 

If you’re walking into a C-suite quarterly planning meeting with a clear and accurate view of company-wide performance, you’re walking in with confidence. 

Instead of leading from a place of uncertainty, you can make data-driven decisions that accelerate growth or turn things around before it’s too late. 

There are two common issues that lead to inconsistencies in forecast data, also known as a deal gap:  

1. The tendency to understate or overstate risk leads to discrepancies across the company hierarchy.

For example, a rep might overstate how many deals they anticipate closing, while their director takes a more conservative approach based on historical knowledge, or vice versa.

2. The opportunity data is compromised by problems like incorrect deal categories, inaccurate close dates, or missing call submissions. 

To give an example scenario from our own forecasting meeting at Salesloft, a director called a number that was 2x higher than what their team was calling. Who was right? It turns out several reps hadn’t submitted their call data in time, so the director made a more accurate call based on the director’s knowledge of the realities on the ground.

The fix for both of these issues? Accountability.

For revenue forecasting to be most effective, it pays to build systems and a culture where proactivity and transparency are rewarded. Leaders across your organization, including RevOps leaders should:

• Make it safe and rewarding for everyone to be as realistic as possible rather than overstating or understating their numbers  
• Enable team members to proactively submit data accurately using consistent forecasting approaches 
• Build automated systems that keep humans in the loop to review data, spot deal gaps, and help ensure accuracy 

Jake explains how Salesloft puts this into practice,

That combination of efficiency and prioritization makes all the difference. “Our team knows that whether their forecasts are on target or not, they’ll have the support they need to make things happen,” Jake says. “This might mean tapping senior leadership to use their networks, bringing in a new negotiating tactic, or offering coaching to the reps.” 

Build team cohesion while delivering insights

While revenue forecasting is focused on consolidating data from many different sources, the magic happens when RevOps, sales managers, and sales reps partner together on forecasting.

Jake notes, “No one knows deals like the front-line reps working on them. How does a rep feel about a particular meeting? How does a sales leader think a deal is progressing?” 

On top of these insights, deal-specific data like deal scores, time and stage, and contract length paint an even more detailed picture. 

"...You can then make predictions about how things will go in the future based on pipeline coverage, taking into account the data in front of you as well as your personal experience and knowledge of what’s really happening,” Jake explains.  

If this sounds like a time-consuming task, it doesn’t have to be. You can use forecasting software to immediately see what everyone is calling for a given time period, and you don’t have to worry about inconsistent forecast methods because the deal criteria are baked right into the platform. 

You can also see at a glance which sales reps are hitting their targets and who is falling behind. From there, you can work through deal gaps and dig into specific deals to determine where additional resources would be most helpful.

When done right, a consolidated approach to forecasting allows teams to:

• Shave off hours of administration burden
• Reduce back-and-forth communication
• Minimize data inconsistencies 
• See and act on insights before the month or quarter ends 

Forecasting as a team sport

When every team understands the overarching business goals and their role in achieving them, each team’s targets and forecasts take on more meaning. One team’s success (or underperformance) directly impacts the entire team’s position at any given time. 

It’s not just about each team hitting revenue numbers month after month. It’s about taking advantage of new opportunities and acting quickly to address risks so your resources are focused in the right place, at the right time. This simply can’t be done in silos. 

It’s hard to predict the future, but when you take the initiative to build accurate forecasts, you can better avoid surprise shortcomings at the end of the quarter. Instead, you can do something much more productive. You can focus on your top-priority deals and do what it takes to push them across the finish line.   

Want more practical advice to elevate your RevOps forecasting? Read the RevOps Leadership Handbook for step-by-step guidance on forecasting, adoption strategies, and maximizing your tech ROI.