Forecast category
Forecast category is the seller’s judgement of an opportunity’s likelihood, commit, best case, pipeline, omitted, held deliberately separate from pipeline stage.
Stage describes where the buyer is. Category describes how confident the seller is. Keeping them independent is what makes both diagnostic: a late-stage deal in best case rather than commit is a specific, visible signal, and it disappears the moment the two are merged or category is auto-derived from stage.
Category earns its keep only if each value has a stated meaning that can be checked after the fact. "Commit" should mean the seller will personally answer for it. Measuring commit accuracy per rep, per quarter, is the discipline that turns the category from an opinion into a calibrated instrument.
Where it breaks
Forecast category is auto-set from stage, so the field contains no information the stage did not already carry.
Related terms
- Sales forecast
- A sales forecast is a derivation from pipeline state under a stated method, not a negotiated commitment collected up the management chain.
- Stage integrity
- Stage integrity is the property of a pipeline in which every stage change corresponds to a verifiable change in buyer commitment, evidenced on the record.
- Pipeline coverage
- Pipeline coverage is the ratio of qualified open pipeline to the target it must produce, evaluated for the period the pipeline can actually close in.
- Win rate
- Win rate is the proportion of a defined cohort of opportunities that reached closed-won, measured from a fixed entry stage.
Field notes on this
- When pipeline stages describe sellers, not buyers
Seller-activity stages can weaken conversion and forecast analysis. Define buyer evidence, then calibrate it against realized outcomes.