Sales forecasting

Sales forecasting is the prediction of how much revenue will close within a defined period, expressed as a range or a probability rather than a single figure, based on the current pipeline and past outcomes.

The inputs are open opportunities with their amounts and stages, how long each has been where it is, and how comparable opportunities resolved historically. Deal age is often more informative than deal stage, because a deal that has sat in the same stage for six weeks is telling you something the stage label is not.

A forecast is a distribution, not a number. Reporting it as a single figure discards the part that matters — how uncertain it is — which is why a forecast without a confidence figure attached should be treated as decoration.

The failure mode is treating output as commitment. A model saying $18,400 will close this month at 71% confidence is not promising $18,400; it is saying that outcomes near that figure are the most likely of many, and that it expects to be wrong about three times in ten.

sales-forecasting is one of the deployable models in the newc0 model library. See also lead scoring.