Dear Customers,

We hope you're well!

At any given time, a sales rep handles multiple deals, each progressing at its own pace. But not all deals will succeed—some will take time, and others may never close. This varying momentum directly impacts the organization’s revenue targets. Yet, for a sales rep, understanding which deals will close within the forecast period and which to prioritize often remains a challenge.

We understand that identifying the right opportunities is the key to driving revenue and staying on track. And, that is why we've developed this enhancement: the ability to predict each deal's likelihood to succeed or fail.

Let's dive in!

A forecast report in Zoho CRM deconstructs your performance and compares your pace with the target. For a growing organization, this report acts as a comparative yardstick, displaying all the deals participating in the forecasting period for each user. This is the current setup.

With this enhancement, we've now equipped the report to display each deal's likelihood of success.

A deal's pace is mostly behavioral in nature. By correlating the behavior of the open deals with historic deal records, the report will assign the following labels to the open deals of an agent:

What these prescriptions could mean for your business?

Deals labeled as likely to win exhibit qualities of winning deals and will mostly convert within the forecast period. Reps can then prioritize and focus on these deals.
Deals labeled as at risk exhibited qualities of deals that have historically been closed lost and are more likely to fail. Accordingly, reps can proceed with caution when it comes to this type of deal and devise strategies to increase their chances of winning them.
Deals labeled as low priority are often in the earliest stages and aren't likely to close in the current forecast period. Accordingly, reps can focus on higher priority deals.

If the deal's behavior has insufficient data points or isn't recorded previously, a blank value will be displayed in the "All Factors" column.

In addition to these benefits, the report also summarizes the potential revenue for the forecast period based on deals marked as "Likely to Win." At a glance, you can see the total number of deals expected to close within the given forecast period. You can also view the number of deals expected to close in the next 10, 20, or 30 days. These insights enable businesses to anticipate overall revenue and address potential shortcomings.

Overall, these enhancements provide a significant boost to your revenue forecasting efforts. The prescriptions help you prioritize, while the summary gives you a glimpse into potential revenue. For a busy sales rep, these insights are invaluable, simplifying deal management and helping you focus on what truly matters.

That's about the enhancement. We're happy to take any comments, feedback, or requests. Drop them as comments—let's connect!

Release plan: This enhancement is available for all users in all DCs, except IN DC.

Help document: Creating and working with Forecasts

Availability: Forecast is available for Enterprise and Ultimate editions.

That's all folks!

Thanks and kind regards,

Saranya Balasubramanian

Zoho CRM Marketing

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