Recipe: Investigate pipeline and forecast fluctuations

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Silhouette of a person standing, representing human figures in various contexts.RevOps, Manager of managers

Diamond.png Gong Forecast*

Deals > Analytics

Follow this recipe to learn how to investigate 'blips' in your pipeline and forecast by simply looking in Gong. This recipe has 3 steps.

  1. In the Analytics > Trends report, look for large blips which indicate something going awry.

    For example, here we can see that we doubled the amount of deals in Commit around January/February, which then disappear in the middle of February:Sales_Forecast_Analytics_Trends_Recipe1.png

    In other words, there were a lot of deals in pipeline that didn't get booked. The pipeline size doubled by $200K, and then it disappeared. You'll want to investigate those deals that slipped.

  2. Go to the Analytics > Changes report, and filter the time range to look at the same 'blip' here.

    In our example, we can see that indeed there were a lot of deals (over $1M) that were pushed out:

    Sales_Forecast_Analytics_Trends_Recipe2.png

  3. Triage the deals that caused the 'blip'.

    Sales_Forecast_Analytics_Trends_Recipe3.png

    1. Filter the Changes report to just Commit deals in order to focus on the most critical deals at that time.

      In our example, we can see that 4 deals were pushed out of Commit.

    2. Scroll down to look at those 4 deals at a high-level.

      Sales_Forecast_Analytics_Trends_Recipe4.png

      In our example, we can see:

      • All 4 deals had changes to their close date, explaining the change

      • The Aventine deal has a warning on it, and not a lot of activity

      • The Indis deal is the biggest ($80k) but is still in Validation

      So, you'll want to take a closer look at the Aventine and Indis deals.

    3. Click the deal name to review the deal from within the Changes report.

      Sales_Forecast_Analytics_Trends_Recipe5.png

      Use "Ask anything" to answer your questions about the deals and review each deal's activity in order to reach a decision on how to best handle those deals.

      • Do you want to stop wasting time and kill one or both of those deals?

      • Or do you want to let those deals ride out because they are legit? Should you rethink the strategy on them?

*The features available to you depend on your company’s plan and your assigned seats.