GONG RECIPE BOOK

Improving forecast accuracy

Ingredients: Deal Drivers, Win/Loss Tool

What is it?

Accurate forecasting isn’t just about getting the numbers right on paper—it affects your business’ ability to allocate resources properly for day-to-day operations and for scaling. While there’s no way to guarantee 100% accuracy, with data in hand, you can arm sales leadership with a more educated and accurate forecast, as well as continuously improve your team’s forecast accuracy.

Who is it for?

Frontline managers are responsible for understanding the health of their deals and making sure their forecasts are accurate. With Gong, they can view data related to forecasting trends and performance, so they can compare team forecasting, manager forecasting, and actual final numbers.

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How does Gong help out?

Gong provides a single platform made up of a forecast board in which sales reps can enter and update their forecast, as well as analytics reports and insights that can help to increase forecast accuracy. Gong’s out-of-the-box functionality for forecasting includes:

A collaboration tool for sales reps and managers to work together on forecasts, including updating CRM data, adding notes, and tracking changes over time.

Analytics showing trends and changes in the forecast and pipeline, providing insights into how accurate the forecast is and what changed over a selected time period.

Insights on forecast accuracy including data on types of deals that are being closed, the stage of the deals, why deals are lost, and so on.

Analytics showing trends and changes in the forecast and pipeline, providing insights into how accurate the forecast is and what changed over a selected time period.

Insights on forecast accuracy, including data on types of deals that are being closed, the stage of the deals, why deals are lost, and so on.

Slack reminders to update numbers, document changes to deals, and keep forecasts up to date.

How does it work?

1. Sign up for Gong Forecast

2. Set up a forecast board (approx. 1 hour)

Leaders or sales operations team members should set up a forecast board for each line of business and include all the applicable forecasting categories, including targets for each individual and manager.

3. Run a few rounds of forecasts

The first step in improving your forecast accuracy is measuring it and seeing where it stands. To be able to provide accurate and actionable insights on your team’s trends and performance, you’ll want to drive the forecasting process across your organization and let Gong analyze several rounds of deals and forecasts, a month at least and ideally more than that.

4. Identify coaching opportunities and implement them

Once you’ve identified trends and issues in forecasting (e.g., a team member who regularly over-forecasts), you can direct sales reps to additional resources directly within Gong, such as calls they can review on a specific topic, or use comments and scorecards to provide tailored feedback.

Pro tips

When reviewing forecast accuracy, you can drill down to the different weeks of the month or quarter and compare how the forecasts have changed over time.