To forecast sales for the next 90 days, list every live deal, give each one a chance of closing based on how deals at that stage have actually turned out for you, and add them up. Then add what new leads are likely to bring in before the 90 days end. Do it as three cases (low, likely, high), and update it for ten minutes every week. Below is the whole thing worked out for a three-person firm.
You need three things to start: a list of open deals with a dollar value and a stage, a rough idea of how often deals at each stage have closed, and how long your deals take. If you don't have the history, use a guess and mark it as a guess. The point is a number you can check against what actually happens, not a perfect one.
Why a forecast built on hope fails
The usual small-business forecast is the unweighted pipeline: add up everything open and call it the future. If you have 18 open deals worth $111,000, you "have" $111,000 coming. You don't. Most of those deals won't close, and many that do will close after the window you care about. The generic fix you see online, applying a standard percentage by stage (10 percent for discovery, 60 percent for a proposal), is better, but those percentages come from other companies. Yours may be 40 percent at quote. Use yours.
List the live deals and assign a stage
Nine Mile Video is a three-person corporate video studio. On October 1 it has 18 live deals. The stage should be the last thing that actually happened, not what you hope will happen next. The stages are defined in sales pipeline stages: replied, meeting held, quote sent. Their list:
- Quote sent: 5 deals, $4,500 + $6,000 + $8,000 + $5,500 + $7,000 = $31,000
- Meeting held: 6 deals, $5,000 + $6,000 + $6,500 + $4,000 + $7,500 + $9,000 = $38,000
- Replied, no meeting yet: 7 deals, $6,000 each as a placeholder = $42,000
Unweighted total: $111,000.
Weight each stage from your own history
Nine Mile looked at the last 12 months. Of deals that reached "quote sent," 40 percent were won. Of those that reached "meeting held" and no further, 22 percent. Of those that only replied, 10 percent. That gives:
- Quote sent: $31,000 x 40% = $12,400
- Meeting held: $38,000 x 22% = $8,360
- Replied: $42,000 x 10% = $4,200
Weighted total: $24,960. That already cuts the picture by three quarters. Next, timing. Only revenue signed inside the 90 days counts for this forecast. Nine Mile's deals usually take about 35 days from quote to signature (the method for measuring yours is in average sales cycle length, and how long it takes to get clients gives typical ranges by channel). So it keeps 100 percent of the quote stage, 90 percent of meeting-held deals, and 60 percent of the replied ones, because many of those will take longer: $12,400 + $7,524 + $2,520 = $22,444.
If you have no history yet
A new business has no 12 months to look back on. Use a rough starting weight (a quote out: 30 percent, a meeting held: 15, a reply: 5), label every one as a guess, and track what happens to the first 20 deals. After 20 outcomes you will have real numbers, and the starting guesses can go. The method of counting where leads drop out is in how many leads you need to get a customer. Until then, treat the high case as unlikely and the low case as the plan you budget against.
Add the deals that don't exist yet
New leads will arrive and some will close inside the window. Nine Mile gets about 15 qualified leads a month, and historically 8 percent of leads become won deals (the figure comes from lead conversion rate). That is 1.2 deals a month at $6,000 average, $7,200 per month of leads. Leads that arrive in month one have time to close. Half of month two's will. Month three's won't. So: $7,200 + $3,600 = $10,800.
Low, likely and high
One number invites false confidence. Give yourself a range:
| Case | Current pipeline | New leads | 90-day total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Low (75% of pipeline, half the new) | $16,833 | $5,400 | $22,233 |
| Likely | $22,444 | $10,800 | $33,244 |
| High (125% of both) | $28,055 | $13,500 | $41,555 |
The 75 and 125 percent are judgment calls. Pick the spread from how wrong you have been before: if your last forecast missed by 30 percent, use 70 and 130.
Month by month
Spread the likely case by when deals are expected to sign: about $11,000 in month one (mostly the quotes already out), $13,000 in month two (the meetings and the first new leads), and $9,244 in month three, which totals $33,244. Nine Mile's monthly costs are about $12,000 for three people and overhead. Average likely revenue is $33,244 / 3 = $11,081 a month, a little under cost. The low case, $7,411 a month, is well under.
The weekly update
Ten minutes every Monday. Move deals to the stage they've reached. Update values after any price change. Drop or halve any deal with no activity in 30 days, because silent deals rarely come back. Add new leads. Recompute the sum. Then compare: last Monday you forecast X for the following four weeks, and you closed Y. After a month you will know which stage weight is too generous. The sheet to keep this in is described in the lead tracking spreadsheet, and the plan it supports in a 90-day sales plan. Rocketship's pipeline board holds the stages and quote values in one place.
What the forecast should change
A forecast is useful only if it changes a decision. Nine Mile's likely case is a bit under cost and the low case is far under, so it doesn't hire this quarter. It chases the five quotes first, because they hold $12,400 of the weighted value: a follow-up on every one this week. It also adds leads, since new business supplies a third of the likely case. If the likely case climbs above $15,000 a month for two weeks running, it considers a contractor. If it falls under the low case, it cuts spend. For the follow-up part, see how to follow up on a quote; for the six numbers to feed this, sales KPIs.
Rocketship finds the buyers, emails them from your own Gmail, follows up, and books the meeting on its own, so new leads keep arriving while you work on the deals you have. Plans that get you customers start at $24.99 a month (Launch), and both Launch and Frontier start with a 7-day free trial, card required.