GTMcraft Plays · The Forecast Truth Test Play

Your forecast counts deals that died in place months ago; strip every deal older than twice your win cycle, then re-engage the few that can return.

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forecast-truth-test-signal.html

The 90-second read

Your forecast is not too small. It is too old. Half the committed number rides on deals that stopped moving months ago and still read green. A deal that has sat open past twice your win cycle is dead in place, not slow. Stage tags are opinions. Age against your win cycle is a fact. Strip the dead deals, re-forecast on what survives, and route the corpses to a re-engage lane instead of deleting them.

• Any open deal older than twice your win cycle is effectively gone.
• Win cycle is when deals actually close won, not your average sales cycle.
• One RevOps team found 22% of pipeline had aged out of viable range.
• Re-weighting forecast by stage age times velocity lifted accuracy 21% in two quarters.
• A deal is rarely lost, it is delayed, so strip it, do not bin it.

Read time: about 5 minutes. First step runnable Monday morning.

The #1 move this week

Age every open deal against your win cycle, then strip the ones past twice it from your committed number.

Most forecasts carry deals that quietly died a quarter ago. They read green because green feels safer than a smaller honest number. Pull every open deal, count its age in days, and compare it to twice your win cycle. Everything past that line leaves the commit this week. That gap between the padded number and the stripped one is your real exposure.

Start here: pull median days-to-close for your won deals over two quarters. That is your win cycle. Multiply it by two.

Ignore this week: do not try to re-engage the stripped deals yet. Strip first, re-forecast, then work the re-engage lane later.