How to make forecasts in HubSpot

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With forecasting, future events or outcomes can be predicted. From current and past data, models can be used to predict what outcomes will be over a given period of time.

It's a super useful tool for businesses and sales teams. Luckily for HubSpot users, it offers a forecasting tool.

The added value of forecasting
Most forecasts use historical data, such as profit ratios, to estimate a future situation, for example, revenue, products sold, etc.

Forecasts have a couple of advantages:

It allows for better cash flow planning, as you have a better idea of ​​when and how much money will come in.
You can also plan your production more accurately and have the information to make better decisions.
As a sales leader, you'll be able to better track your reps' performance. If you know what they're expected to close in the future and can monitor their sales activities, you'll list of telegram users in oman be able to coach them when necessary to ensure they're hitting their quota.
However, keep in mind that it's not easy to create forecasts that accurately reflect the reality of your business. In this blog post, we explain what you need to do to make a good forecast and how HubSpot can help you with it.

Defining the approach to forecasting
A good forecast is determined by the metrics you choose to use to make it. There are some popular forecasting metrics you can consider when you start forecasting.

Quota Compliance: Tracking between sales quota and what was actually closed.
Weighted Pipeline: The expected revenue by assigning a win probability to each stage of the deal and multiplying that by the value at that stage.
Pipeline Coverage: The total value of all opportunities in the pipeline, compared to quota.
Forecast Coverage: Compare your weighted sales pipeline to your quota.
You can turn these insights into actions to coach your reps. For example, your sales rep has high pipeline coverage but fairly low forecast coverage. This could mean that many of their deals aren’t moving to later stages in the pipeline. You might want to focus on coaching your rep to advance opportunities further down the pipeline.

Keep in mind that coaching is not just about telling them to “generate more leads” or “close more deals.” As a sales manager, your job is to help them understand what exactly they can do in their daily activities to make this happen.

In order to do that, you have to recognize the fact that forecast metrics are not directly manageable. However, you can try to influence them by selecting and reporting on appropriate sales goals (e.g. deal closing rate, number of deals per stage, sales cycle length, total time spent on actual selling).

In turn, sales goals can be improved by working on sales activities (e.g. number of calls, emails, meetings, demos, etc., possibly broken down by account or lead) that are directly manageable. It is important to look for patterns in sales goals that are influenced by them, and which sales activities have an impact on those goals.

Forecasts in HubSpot
If you are a HubSpot user and want to start or improve your forecasting, there are a few tools provided by HubSpot that you can use. These include the reporting tool, the sales analytics tool, and the forecasting tool.

01. Reporting tool
The reporting tool allows you to visualize data known to HubSpot about objects such as contacts, companies, deals, activities, etc. It comes with a Custom Report Builder that allows you to combine properties into reports that are tailored to your business.