We recently rolled out the forecasting tool in Hubspot and it's a pretty good v1 but with one glaring issue. Reps who haven't sold anything and aren't forecasting any sales in a month are NOT included in the Weighted Forecast reporting from the Sales Analytics module.
Each month we have all our sales reps join a national "Shot Callers" meeting where they call their shot for the following month. This builds some healthy competition and public accountability across the entire team. If you say you're going to close $10k next month, in front of all your peers, your boss, and your exec team, you have a little extra motivation/peer pressure to deliver on that promise.
Each week our sales leaders from frontline managers all the way up to the c-suite are reviewing the forecast; comparing calls vs actuals to see how the team is doing. This is done by viewing the Weighted Forecast report from Sales Analytics to show the forecast call amount, quota amount, and detailed breakdown of deals in the pipeline.
HERE'S MY MAIN ISSUE: Reps who have committed to a call at the start of the month but have sold NOTHING and have NOTHING in their pipeline are excluded from these reports. This allows underperforming reps to hide from scrutiny. It also creates blindspots for leadership when someone may need help but are afraid/embarrassed to ask.
At a minimum, the Weighted Forecast report MUST include all reps who have submitted a forecast call amount; especially if they haven't sold and will not sell anything in the month. This is a major gap in accountability and visibility within the forecasting tool today.
Do you agree? Disagree? Have other suggestions? Let me know in the comments!
Absolutely agree! Zero is a value, and while it means a lack of quantity, that lack needs to be reported! There may be very legimitate reasons for a forecast of zero, but pretending that this doesn't even exist excludes awareness.
Deals with no values are often excluded from all our reports and we have had to put filters on the say "if a deal value is known OR if a deal value is unknown" so those will show up. So yes please by default include zo/no value deals in all reports!
YES PLEASE THIS!!!!! It is so frustrating to not be able to see entire pipeline phases because a zero isn't meaningless - in fact it is often essential. This is critical functionality. We have to download the reports and then manually create pipelines. It is frustratating beyond belief - this is critical functionality.
As JOpie says above: ZERO IS A VALUE.
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