Sales Forecast Components

Several things come together to make up your forecast, and you have several ways to control forecasts. This chart works from the bottom up, much like your forecast.

The components in the chart are explained here.

• You have one or more territories, and the territories form a hierarchy. It's likely your manager owns a parent territory to yours.

• You have sales opportunities. An opportunity contains one or more product items, and each product item is assigned to a territory. In this case, your territory.

• The close date of each product item determines which forecast includes it. A product item with a February close date appears in the First Quarter forecast.

• If your product item matches the criteria set for the forecast, then it's included in your forecast. An example of criteria is the win probability must be greater than 70 percent.

• If your product item doesn't match the criteria, you can use the criteria override to manually include the item in your forecast. Or you can manually exclude one that does match.

• As the primary salesperson for the product item, you count the revenue credit in your forecast and it rolls up to the parent territory revenue forecast.

• You can forecast an overlay credit for a product item owned by someone else. You have separate overlay forecasts to track overlay credits.

• Open product items and won items added together form your original forecast for a specific territory and forecast period, such as the first quarter. You can then make adjustments to product items and to your overall forecast. You now have your adjusted forecast and you can submit it to your manager.