#45: Four Secrets to Improve Forecast Accuracy

Chip Royce, Flywheel Advisors

Your financial forecasts only matter if your operation can back them up.

Most B2B forecasts look great until someone asks if they’re achievable.

You’ve seen the meetings: high-fives, “stretch” targets, and a parade of spreadsheets.

Then, reality hits when you realize you’re living in the land of “could” instead of “can.”

Accurate forecasting is part discipline and part digging into how your company works, week by week.

It isn’t glamorous, but it’s the only approach I’ve found that gets close to reliable.

1. Top-Down Numbers Are the Starting Gun, Not the Finish Line

A top-down forecast is a fine way to kick things off. It gives everyone a number to chase, clarifies the funding story, and makes the goalposts visible. Set your annual target—10 percent growth, twenty, whatever fits.

Here’s where things go sideways.

Too many leadership teams draw the bullseye, then reverse-engineer the dart. The forecast becomes a pitch, not a reality check. This leaves front-line folks to bridge a canyon-sized gap between expectation and reality. I’ve seen companies shoot for 25 percent growth with a hiring pipeline that could only support eight new reps, even though the math screamed for double that.

Treat top-down goals as working theories. You aren’t sandbagging; you’re running the stress test now, not when it’s too late.

Ask this: If we had to hit this number with today’s resources, where would the wheels come off first?

2. Bottom-Up Forecasts: Start with Reality

The best operators don’t start with finance. They start with the real world.

What’s the cold truth about your sales funnel, your monthly win rate, or your product delivery speed?

If your customer success team is drowning, a bump in new logos may just mean more churn in three months. If your SDRs max out at 40 untouched leads a week, the biggest MQL pipeline won’t save your quarter.

Reverse-engineering your forecast model is an underrated strategy. Work backwards from outcomes you know you can support. Sometimes that means telling your CRO that sales can’t double until new reps are fully ramped—which takes at least three months. Sometimes it means admitting marketing’s lead-gen engine hits a brick wall at follow-up.

Someone in your organization has the answer. You just have to let them say it. Bring the doers and the skeptics into the forecast build. It keeps everyone honest and prevents the “we’ll staff up as we go” fantasy from poisoning your forecast.

3. Weekly Timeframes: Catch Problems Before They Become Excuses

I grew up in companies that measured by the quarter. But the only way to prevent surprises from knocking the wind out of you is to track in tight, repeatable cycles. For me, and for most ops teams who have made their metrics stick, that means a seven-day cadence.

Waiting until the month-end to realize your pipeline is flat is like driving through a rainstorm with the wipers off. When you track weekly, you’ll spot that a deal slipped, leads dropped, or a deployment got snagged.

Weekly reporting is simply better. It reduces surprises.

4. Seasonality: It’s Not Just for Retail

Many CEOs tune out when “seasonality” comes up, thinking Q4 surges only matter for D2C. This is a mistake.

Most B2B companies experience seasonality. A government vertical will grind to a halt in July and go into overdrive at the fiscal year-end. SaaS deals often vanish around the annual industry trade show, then pile up the week after. And who in tech hasn’t seen new projects take a nap during the holidays?

Go back and look for spots where deals always stall or unexpectedly blitz. Study the historically slow months. Build these hiccups into your forecast on purpose instead of pretending the past won’t repeat itself. It’s not pessimism; it’s precision.

Your true “busy season” often hides one layer deeper. Perhaps your cross-sell machine only comes alive after Q1 renewals, or onboarding slows to a crawl when training cycles overlap.

Improving Forecast Accuracy Helps You Sleep Better

Here’s what works:

• Don’t let financial targets dictate the story. Treat them as a north star, not the path itself.
• Start your math with operational truths. Let the reality of the people doing the work shape the plan.
• Keep your measurement window narrow. See trends as they happen, not after you’re stuck explaining yourself.
• Hunt down your seasonality. Know when to surge and when to expect the lull.

Accuracy isn’t about being a spreadsheet artist. It requires knowing your team, your timing, and the quirks that make your business unique. A forecast isn’t a bet. It’s a promise your team and your board will count on.

And if anyone wants to argue, I’m probably up for a cup of coffee. I’ve seen just about every forecasting trainwreck—and a few miracles, too.

Flywheel Advisors treats forecast accuracy as a discipline, not a hope-and-prayer side project.
We see the blind spots most overlook, then turn shaky numbers into plans you can use when the pressure’s on.