Every founder and sales leader I talk to wants better forecasting.
More accurate. More reliable. Something they can actually take to the board without adding a disclaimer.
And when I dig in, the forecasting is almost never the real issue.
The real issue is that the underlying data only gets looked at once a month.
Or the forecast call happens but nobody's held accountable for what they said last week.
Or the data gets cleaned for the meeting and goes stale the moment it's over.
Forecasting is a rhythm problem.
A forecast is only as accurate as the data feeding it. And data only stays clean when someone is checking it consistently — not in a once-a-quarter scramble before the board meeting.
Here's what a basic operating rhythm looks like at a 15-person company:
Weekly: A 30-minute pipeline review. Not a status update — a scrub. Deals that haven't moved get challenged. Close dates that have slipped get re-evaluated. One person owns the meeting and keeps it moving.
Monthly: A 60-minute revenue review. What closed, what didn't, what's in the pipe for next month, and what changed from the last forecast. This is where you find out if your signals are reliable.
Quarterly: Zoom out. How are the metrics trending? Where are deals getting stuck? Are the KPIs you're tracking still the right ones?
None of this is complicated. But it only works if it's consistent.
The companies that forecast well aren't using better data. They're using the same data — reviewed more often, by people who are accountable for its accuracy.
Build the cadence first. The forecast accuracy follows.
Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash