If your team uses custom forecast categories or stages to forecast deals, you’re already taking steps toward a more personalized and effective sales process. But did you know you can further enhance your forecasting experience by customizing your rollup metrics to reflect these unique fields? 

Here’s how you can take the default setup and fine-tune it to match your team’s workflow, giving you better insights and more accurate forecasts.

1. Customize Your Forecast Categories and Rollup Metrics

Many teams prefer using custom picklist fields or stages to forecast, rather than sticking to the default categories. This allows for greater flexibility and a more accurate reflection of where deals stand in your pipeline.

Key question to ask your team: Do you use stages or a custom picklist field to forecast deals instead of the standard forecast category?

If the answer is yes, here’s what to do next:

• Create rollup metrics for each value in the field you’re using. This ensures that the numbers you care about are reflected in the forecast.
• Combine metrics where it makes sense. You might want to track a few key combinations, such as:
  • Closed + Commit: This rollup helps managers see the most likely outcome of the forecast period by combining closed deals with your highest-confidence category, like "Commit."
  • Commit + Best Case: This gives a view of both your highest and second-highest confidence categories, allowing you to predict the best possible outcome.

2. Finalize and Organize Your Custom Metrics

Once you’ve created your custom metrics, it’s important to finalize them and ensure they’re visible in the right order for easy tracking. Make sure to include the following metrics:

• Closed Won (from the standard stage field)
• Weighted Pipeline/AI Forecast (Salesloft default)
• Forecast Types (user-submitted forecasts)
• Any additional custom rollup metrics based on your specific fields or stages.

3. Organize Your Forecast View

To make sure your forecast is as clear as possible, organize your metrics in a way that reflects the confidence level of each. A best practice is to list your metrics from left to right, with the highest-confidence metrics on the left. For example:

1. Goal
2. Forecast Types
3. Closed Won
4. Weighted Pipeline/AI Forecast
5. Closed Won + Verbal Commit (custom rollup)
6. Closed Won + Verbal + Negotiation (custom rollup)
7. Verbal Commit
8. Negotiation
9. Demo
10. Initial Meeting
11. New Opportunity

By arranging your forecast this way, you’ll be able to quickly see the most likely outcomes of the period, while also keeping an eye on earlier-stage opportunities.

Customizing your forecast to reflect your unique stages or custom fields allows you to make better, more informed decisions. By adjusting your rollup metrics and organizing your forecast for clarity, you’ll gain greater visibility into your pipeline and more accurate predictions—giving you the tools you need to succeed.

Ready to take your forecasting to the next level? Let’s discuss how you’ve personalized your forecast—share your thoughts and best practices in the comments!

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