Forecast Commit

A forecast commit is a rep's named, on-the-record promise that specific deals will close inside the current period. It sits at the top of the forecast category stack — above "best case" and "pipeline" — and it carries personal accountability: if a committed deal slips, someone has to explain why in front of the VP. The commit number rolls up from rep to manager to CRO to board, which is why a missed commit at the rep level becomes a missed quarter at the company level three layers later.

How Forecast Commit Works

The mechanics are simple. Each week, reps tag every open opportunity with a forecast category. Commit means: I will bet my credibility this closes. The roll-up math:

A manager's commit to the CRO is the sum of rep commits, minus the manager's own haircut based on historical forecast accuracy. A team whose reps historically land 85% of commit gets a 15% manager discount whether the reps like it or not.

A Worked Forecast Commit Example

An AE carries 14 open opportunities worth $1.9M against a $650K quarterly quota. In week 6, she commits 4 deals totaling $410K, tags $520K as best case, and leaves the rest in pipeline. Her manager, who has watched her land 90% of commits over four quarters, applies a 10% haircut and commits $369K upward. The CRO aggregates eight managers the same way and calls the quarter at $4.1M against a $4.8M target — which triggers a hiring-freeze conversation in week 8 instead of a surprise in week 13. That early signal is the entire point of the exercise.

When Sales Teams Use Forecast Commit

VPs of Sales live and die on commit accuracy because the board number is built from it. RevOps audits commit hygiene weekly, comparing commit tags against stage, age, and activity data to catch deals that were committed on vibes. Finance uses the CRO-level commit to guide revenue recognition planning and hiring decisions. IC reps experience commit as the weekly meeting where optimism gets expensive.

Common Forecast Commit Gaming Patterns

Sandbagging is the canonical exploit: a rep holds a signed-verbal deal in "best case" until the final week, then flips it to commit and looks like a hero with 100% accuracy. Sandbagging protects the rep and poisons the roll-up, because the CRO under-forecasts and the company under-hires. The mirror-image pattern is happy-ears commit — tagging deals commit to avoid an uncomfortable pipeline conversation, then eating deal slippage in week 12. A third pattern is commit rotation: managers quietly swap which deals are committed week to week so no single miss looks like a pattern. The fix in all three cases is measuring accuracy per rep over time, not per quarter — a rep at exactly 100% commit accuracy is usually under-committing, which is its own form of lying. Commit also tells you nothing about deal quality; a rep can be perfectly accurate on a weighted pipeline full of small, discounted deals and still miss quota on the year.