August 26, 2026

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Hi Everyone,

Forrester found that 79% of sales organizations miss their forecast by more than 10%.

The tempting fix is cleaner CRM data or a new forecasting tool. But most forecast error comes from the reps themselves. They learn it's safer to pad the number than to give you the honest one.

Today we're walking you through how to find out where your forecast error comes from, and how to remove your team's reasons to game the number.

The two ways reps game a forecast

Sales teams have names for both.

Sandbagging means committing less than you expect to close, so you can beat the number later.

Happy ears means believing every deal will close because the buyer sounded positive on the last call.

This isn't a character problem. When a rep sees that beating the forecast brings praise and lowering it brings pressure, padding the number becomes the obvious choice.

Change what gets rewarded and the behavior changes with it.

Start tracking this month

You need two numbers per rep. What they commit at the start of the month, and what they close at the end.

​Open the tracker we built and write down each rep's commit for this month. When the month closes, add the actual result. Reps will update their commit during the month. Ignore the updates and compare the result to the number they gave at the start.

After three months, look at the direction of each rep's misses.

• A rep who beats their commit by a wide margin every month is sandbagging.
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• A rep who keeps missing has happy ears.
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• A rep who sometimes beats their commit and sometimes falls short is giving you their honest guess. Deals surprise in both directions, and an honest forecast shows it.

Dave Kellogg, the former CEO of Host Analytics, gives a standard to check against. Over time, a rep should close about 90% of committed deals. A rep who closes 100% every month is holding deals back.

Access the tracker

Change what gets rewarded

Once you can see who misses and how, the next step is changing what reps get praised for.

1. Review the misses with the team: After three months, show each rep how far they missed and in which direction. Treat a big beat the same as a big miss, because both mean the rep didn't know their pipeline.
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2. Thank the rep who lowers their commit: You grade reps on their starting number, but you still want their updates, because that's how you hear about problems early. A rep who flags a slipping deal in week two gives you weeks to respond instead of a surprise at close. Kyle Norton, the CRO of Owner.com, calls this running toward bad news. He reports an AE forecast miss rate under 10%

Go deeper

👉 Forrester: The Definitive Way to Measure and Grade Sales Forecast Accuracy — use this to set up Day One grading; it settles the debate about what "accurate" means.

👉 Kellblog: How to Train Your VP of Sales to Think About the Forecast — read this before your next forecast call; the 90/70/30 standard alone will change the conversation.

👉 The Revenue Leadership Podcast: Building a Revenue Operating System — steal Kyle Norton's weekly MAPLE update template and see how Owner.com runs its forecast in writing.

👉 SaaStr: The RevOps Playbook: Owner.com CRO's Secrets to Scaling — we recommend this if you want the full system behind the sub-10% miss rate.

Coming up tomorrow

In tomorrow's issue, you'll learn how Zillow's valuation model lost $304 million in one quarter, and how to catch the same problem early.

Thanks for reading!