What are the best forecasting practices for public companies when they see a large growth deal entry the pipeline?

Hi @Tom Carter ! Really interesting question. I agree with Josh’s answer. One thing I’ll throw out there is at Clari, we have an extra amount field to capture the ‘swing’ / ‘upside’ amount. This has been a really effective way for the team to communicate that a deal may be $500k, but could go up to $1M. 

Hi, @Tom Carter! Tagging a few execs in our community in case they have a take on this to share.

@txsalesldr @Lydia Winn @Bret Libigs would love your perspective on how you prefer to see your teams forecast deals with big upside potential!

Hi Jessica,

Can you show/advised where is “we have an extra amount field to capture the ‘swing’ / ‘upside’ amount”.

I haven’t seen this. Thank you.

Hi @Danislav Spasov !

Here’s how we’ve set up some of our key amount fields: 

1. Net New Average ARR —> main amount field tied to the quote 

2. Upside —> reps enter the ’swing’ amount of the deal in this field 

3. Net New ARR Average Upside —> automatically calculates ’Net New Average ARR’ + ‘Upside'

This set-up makes it easy for reps to communicate the potential spread, and helps us forecast our ‘Best Case’ forecast call.

Here’s how it looks in a demo environment in Forecasting (not exactly the same as our set-up, but hopefully gives you an idea):

Let me know if that’s helpful. 

Jessica 

jessica_starr wrote:

Hi @Danislav Spasov !

Here’s how we’ve set up some of our key amount fields: 

1. Net New Average ARR —> main amount field tied to the quote 

2. Upside —> reps enter the ’swing’ amount of the deal in this field 

3. Net New ARR Average Upside —> automatically calculates ’Net New Average ARR’ + ‘Upside'

This set-up makes it easy for reps to communicate the potential spread, and helps us forecast our ‘Best Case’ forecast call.

Here’s how it looks in a demo environment in Forecasting (not exactly the same as our set-up, but hopefully gives you an idea):

 

Let me know if that’s helpful. 

Jessica 

Thank you so much for showing me this.

Much appreciated!

Hey Tom - 

Here’s what we do internally:

-Forecast the conservative amount (the key for me is having a strong POV on how we’re getting to that amount.  ie/confident they’ll move forward with XYZ product @ $X amount.  Upside in addtl personas or products equals $Y). 

-Input the conservative amount as “most likely” and represent the addtl amount in “upside”

-We put these notes in the actual notes section of the forecast module and at the opportunity level so execs have visibility/insights into why there’s a large swing and what actually makes up the upside amount