Blogs

The presenter at a recent AI conference put up this slide (courtesy of McKinsey) to demonstrate that “AI maturity varies significantly across and within sectors.” They did this by measuring something McKinsey calls AI Quotient (AIQ) across “800 companies and 20K participants worldwide.” Source: McKinsey AIQ by Sector slide (conference photo) If you’ve been following our blogs you know that we rail against showing simple average (mean) statistics. Point statistics like average

You’ve seen the boasts.  “Within 2%.” “Within 5%.” “Within 10%.” Whatever. Forecast-accuracy headlines abound. Are they real, or performed with smoke and mirrors? How can you tell? We’ve blogged about how unrealistic these claims are  and even how undesirable they are . Yet the headlines continue. And I believe that most of the claims are based on some narrow conditions where the claims are valid. My goal therefore isn’t to debunk anyone’s claim; it’s to understand how it’s p

When I say that you can’t maximize sales and forecast accuracy, people often are confused or take exception. Here’s why you can’t have...

Here's a great interview [1] with Rob Hyndman, one of the world’s leading authorities on forecasting. Rob defines forecasting as: An estimate of the probability distribution of a variable to be observed in the future.  That’s worth pausing on. Forecasting is not about accurately predicting a single number. It’s about understanding the probability distribution of possible outcomes . A probability distribution shows the range of possible outcomes and their relative probabilitie

Generative AI is pretty impressive when it comes to creative writing and generating ideas. But how does it do on optimization problems...

The traditional sales forecasting playbook: Reps categorize each deal — Commit, Best Case, Pipeline, Omitted. Managers roll them up, then...

A basic problem in sales optimization goes like this: You have a goal for the quarter. You have deals in the pipeline. Which deals to...

Your factory consists of four assembly lines. Each one has a hopper that feeds parts at a rate of 4 per hour into a four-stage process....

The Pavilion 2025 GTM Benchmark Report (page 8) contains this striking statistic: 14% of sellers generate 80% of revenue. Yikes! That...

The results from our LinkedIn poll are in. More than half of respondents think forecast accuracy should be part of a sales incentive...

There’s an easier way that helps you sell more. CRM systems have three primary opportunity fields vital to understanding deal health:...

Why are sales teams and their RevTech vendors using broken approaches to estimate win rates? Funnelcast win rates estimate the chance a...

Your average stage-to-stage conversion times are: MQL  → 10 days → SQL  → 15 days → Demo  → 60 days→ Contracts  → 15 days → Won Your...

This is part one of a two part post. See More Conversion Rate Conundrums for the complete analysis. Also see our video explainer on...

Thinking evolves. The earth is round, not flat. The earth revolves around the sun, not the other way around. Lightning is electricity,...

I was talking with our CEO and founder Bill Kantor recently. He reflected on the use of CRM data. I've spent a lot of time with sales...

You're asking, "What does Brad Pitt have to do with verbs, adjectives, and sales?" Stay with me. I promise this will make sense. "Adapt...

It's time-honored folklore: if your pipeline coverage ratio (PCR) is greater than 3x you should make your number. Following this advice,...

If you have a 20% chance of winning $100 bet, statisticians would say the bet has an "expected value" of $20 (20% of $100). It's how much...

Do you want to report sales news, predict it, or change it? Hold that thought. Revenue Tech platforms abound. But are these applications...