How I Built a Forecast in 5 Minutes

Yes, I Really Built a Forecast and Funnel In 5 Minutes

One of the first things I did when I became the new CEO of Full Circle insights was reimplement our software at our company. I figured there was no better way to learn the product and its benefits than jumping in headfirst – just like a client.

It had been years since our deployment had been refreshed and when I came in, we changed several pieces of the go-to-market process so a fresh implementation process was needed. Our funnel and lead definitions changed. The ideal customer profile changed. Even budgets and marketing programs changed. If something hadn’t completely changed, it evolved.

Since I’m a marketer at heart, it was exciting for me to dive into Full Circle. I saw the opportunity to learn from ourselves.

Were our “good ideas” actually good ideas?
Did we have enough market data to build compelling campaigns?
What was the optimized process to hand a prospect from Marketing to Sales?

Working with our implementation team was great too. I had a vision of what I wanted the go-to-market process to look like and with their involvement, that vision became a reality. Frankly, they made the vision better by applying their knowledge to create a more sustainable process.

The 5-Minute Forecast

The real impact of reimplementation didn’t happen until a few weeks later when I was doing prep for a board meeting. Since no board meeting is complete without a Marketing funnel, I decided to use our product to help create it. We also needed a decent forecast, so with a little experimentation here, tweaks to the numbers there, I went to work – eager to try things and discover for myself the sensitivity of our funnel, analyze the overall marketing program, and get the info needed to forecast the year ahead.

Based on experience at previous companies, I expected everything to take about a weekend to go into the board meeting with numbers that were “directionally” accurate. Really, who is ever truly satisfied with their funnel metrics?

Guess what? I was done with my funnel and forecast in five minutes using the Full Circle Planning dashboard. This can’t be right, I thought. So I ran the calculations again. Same result.

A little excited and a little confused, I decided to check with our CFO. Surely he would poke holes into the model.

To my surprise, he didn’t. He agreed with the numbers, the assumptions, and the model we built.

I didn’t set out to write an “ad” about Full Circle – I really was surprised by the speed with which I was able to answer my own go-to-market questions and I was thrilled by the CFO’s reaction (I got the same reaction from our VP of Sales).

If you are looking to get a handle on your campaign attribution and build a unified funnel that holds up to stress tests and analysis, take a look at Full Circle.

Honestly, I wish I had Full Circle before I became the CEO of Full Circle.