Forecasting

In a given sales team you often have several sales reps working on many deals at the same time. The business have sales target for the year and the quarter, so it is important to understand if the sales team is on track to hit these targets. Traditionally businesses rely on sales teams self-reporting such forecasts but this is known to be inaccurate and error-prone. Instead AI can assist – both to predict the existing deals likely to close, new deals likely to happen as well as to compare and understand where and how the sales team’s own forecast is inaccurate.

Infer’s AI forecasting package has three parts to it:

• AI Forecasting of current pipeline
• AI Forecasting beyond current pipeline
• Breakdown and comparison of sales team’s forecast versus AI forecast

The AI Forecasting package predicts both closing date, amount and probability on a per deal level, which can then be aggregated in a number of ways. It also predicts future closed deals beyond the current pipeline.

Let’s look at a few.

Expected deals to be closed in coming weeks.

AI Predicted Amount by predicted close date

This is the weighted forecast, aggregated by the week of the predicted close date. The chart provides a detailed breakdown of expected deal closures in the coming weeks. While the next four weeks look slow, we can anticipate a strong finish by the end of October.

Expected value of deals across the pipeline

AI Predicted Amount by their deal stages

This forecast is now aggregated by deal stage, providing a detailed breakdown of the expected value of deals across the pipeline. As shown, we have a healthy top-of-funnel with a significant amount of potential new business coming in.

Prediction of future closed business beyond the pipeline

Forecasting beyond current pipeline

The Infer AI Forecasting package also predicts future closed business beyond the current pipeline. This forecast aggregates historic trends and seasonality to project business outcomes for the next six months.

Identify misalignment between human and AI forecast

Reported deal amount vs AI predicted deal amount by Deal stage

Another interesting way to use the Infer AI Forecast is to compare it with your traditional forecast in HubSpot, reported by sales reps and leaders. This comparison allows you to quickly identify misalignments in your pipeline, such as discrepancies in deal probabilities and close dates.

For example, significant discrepancies at the Proposal stage can be examined by looking at deals with the largest differences in weighted amounts between the reported values and the AI forecast. The Infer package makes this analysis straightforward and actionable.

This version maintains clarity and conciseness while ensuring the message flows logically.

Reported deal amount vs AI predicted deal amount by Deal owner

Similarly, you can examine discrepancies between the reported forecast and the AI-predicted forecast by deal owner, or by both owner and stage using a pivot table. Traditional forecasts often overlook the deal owner, assuming a flat probability of close across owners. By accounting for deal ownership, the AI forecast offers a more realistic picture of your current pipeline’s value.

Additionally, the Infer AI forecast incorporates all activities (emails, meetings, etc.), providing a “real-time” forecast that stays up-to-date with each deal’s progress.

These are just a few of the many reports, insights, and dashboards that the Infer AI Forecasting package provides natively in HubSpot. For more information, book a demo or explore our other product demos.