How Often Do You Hold Forecast Review Meetings?

Here at OpenView Venture Partners, many of our portfolio companies have offices located very close to ours, in the Innovation District in Boston. That gives me the chance to network and get to know many of their sales leaders and sales reps, in person. During a recent meeting, one sales rep told me he thought that his boss was making them meet too often to go through forecast and pipeline reviews. This got me thinking about what the right frequency for the pipeline and forecast review meeting actually is,  and here is what I’ve determined.

Regardless of the length of your sales cycle, you should hold a forecast review meeting with every sales rep at least once per week . Quite simply, if you aren’t reviewing the business that is closing on a weekly basis, you don’t know your business. That’s a good philosophy for VPs of Sales to live by at expansion stage companies.

If you have a shorter sales cycle with a low ASP, you will probably be focusing on the many deals that are closing within the next week. If your sales cycle is longer with a high ASP, there may only be a few forecasted deals to close. But even so, that doesn’t mean you should have fewer or less frequent forecast review meetings. Rather, that makes it even more important to stay on top of those deals.