What reporting rests on
Every sales report is assembled from what was recorded: lead status, lead source, deal stage, deal value, and close dates. The reports are only ever as honest as those five fields.
Forecasting from the pipeline
A forecast is deals by stage, weighted by how likely each stage is to close and when.
That only works if stages mean the same thing to everyone. If one person marks a deal Negotiation when a price has been mentioned and another waits until terms are agreed, the two are not comparable and the total is fiction.
Agree the definitions once as a team. It is the cheapest accuracy improvement available.
What to watch
Stage plus age. Deals sitting at the same stage for weeks are stalled, and a board full of them looks healthy while producing nothing.
Lead source against won deals, not against lead volume. The channel producing the most enquiries is frequently not the one producing the most customers, and only the second one deserves more money.
Lost reasons. The cheapest market research you will get, and the only report that tells you about the business you are not winning.
What makes the numbers wrong
- Deals left open after they were decided
- Lead status never moving past New
- Values entered as guesses and never corrected
- Lost deals quietly deleted rather than marked lost
Each is a habit rather than a fault in the software, and each one costs you the report.