Sales Operations
A forecast leadership could defend, built on definitions the team agreed to
Professional services firm · $22M revenue
The situation
Pipeline stages had been inherited from a CRM template and reinterpreted by every team. Managers ran parallel spreadsheets. Board reporting was assembled by hand in the final week of the quarter.
What was built
Stage definitions with explicit exit criteria written with the sellers; CRM reconfiguration to enforce them; a weekly pipeline review with a fixed agenda; and automated reporting replacing the manual board pack.
The result
- Forecast variance inside 8% for three consecutive quarters
- Board reporting prep down from ~3 days to under an hour
- Two-thirds of manager pipeline spreadsheets retired