Repeatable Forecast: 5 Green Fields

I started at Workiva in 2011 as a founding salesperson. We were on our way to $100 million in ARR in 5 years. Matt Rizai was CEO. He said, “Look, it’s great that you exceeded the forecast by 150% last quarter. However, if you had accurately forecasted that 150% amount, I could have hired more people and we would be growing faster. So, you need to improve your forecasting skills.”

That is the problem. You can crush the number and still hurt growth, because the company cannot hire against a forecast it did not see coming.

The sellers had the other half. They would tell you the system sucks, and they could tell you why. Salesforce becomes owned by everyone except sales. Required fields pile up. Nobody maintains them. That pisses salespeople off.

Many of my colleagues in sales, myself more than others, are what I call lazy efficient. We find the best way with the least effort. That can be a superpower. Burden us with requirements that do no real work and we stop updating the system.

In 2014 a great colleague had an idea to form a sales council. Sellers talk to their peers about what is actually hurting progress, then go fix it. As teams grow, I highly recommend that loop.

On the council I took both sides. You win for the people, and you win for the business.

We built a sheet so a seller could update every open opportunity on one page. If you had 30 deals open, you could see the fields that mattered and update them on the spot. We called it 5 Green Fields.

The five fields are nothing magical.

Close date.
Stage.
Amount.
Next step.
Forecast Category (Commit, Upside, Pipeline)

That’s it. Get those five right and you should have a pretty damn accurate forecast.

The hard part was definitions and adoption. Everyone had their own meaning for a stage. Then you have to get people to actually do the work. We made it simple enough to execute once a week. The company invests a little so the forecast is real.

For founders, the important part is that your board starts to believe you. Investors look for competence in operations. Hold yourself and all sellers accountable to this and you get a more predictable revenue story.

Promise a number and deliver it. The board notices. Other investors do diligence and say, "Good grief, these guys can actually execute."

This is as much a story about execution and the reputation of your business as it is about excellence in sales.

Call the number. Crush the number. Execute.