Your forecast isn't a strategy

A pipeline becomes unreliable when its stages measure what your team did rather than what the buyer agreed to. Fix the definitions and the forecast usually corrects itself without anyone selling differently.

The symptom is familiar: coverage looks healthy, the number is confidently presented, and then deals slip a quarter at a time with reasons that sound plausible individually and alarming in aggregate.

The structural problem

Most stage definitions describe seller activity. Demo delivered. Proposal sent. Follow-up scheduled. All of that can happen in full while the buyer has made no commitment of any kind, which is why a deal can sit at seventy per cent for two quarters.

Buyer-commitment definitions are different, and harder to fake. The buyer has named the problem and its cost. The buyer has confirmed budget source. The buyer has introduced the person who signs. The buyer has agreed an evaluation sequence with dates. The buyer has told you what would make them say no.

Rewriting stages this way is unpleasant in the first month, because pipeline falls. What falls out was never there.

What to examine

• Stage definitions. Does each one require something the buyer did, verifiable by someone who was not in the room?
• The buying committee. Do you know every person who must agree, and have you met them? In healthcare this routinely includes clinical, operational, financial, security and legal reviewers who appear late and have absolute veto.
• Implementation constraints. A deal that cannot be delivered this quarter will not be revenue this quarter, whatever the close date says. Delivery capacity belongs in the forecast conversation.
• Conversion assumptions. Where do your rates come from? If they are aspirational rather than observed, you have a plan, not a forecast. Use your own history, however thin, and widen the range honestly.
• Accountability. Who owns the number, who may change a close date, and does anyone review the reason? A date that moves without a recorded cause is a date that will move again.

The test

Take the five largest open deals. For each, write the specific evidence the buyer has committed — not your assessment, the artifact. A written next step with a date. A named signer. A confirmed budget line.

If you cannot produce that evidence for most of them, the forecast is a hope with decimal places. That is a diagnosable, fixable condition, but it is not fixed by pressure on the team, because the team is reporting faithfully against definitions that do not measure anything.

The same examination is what a disciplined investor runs on a target's pipeline before committing capital. It is usually better to run it on yourself first.

Testing whether a pipeline measures buyer commitment is part of a Commercial Diagnostic. Running the same examination on a target or a portfolio company is Commercial Diligence.

Katie Jackson is the founder of Unbound Growth Advisory, which builds the commercial foundation healthcare companies skip. Twenty-seven years inside healthcare’s buying process, then three commercial organizations built or rebuilt from nothing. Start a conversation or read the FAQ.