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Sales & Retail vocabulary · Targets, Metrics & Commission

Sales forecast

Meaning in sales & retail, with examples

/ˈseɪlz ˌfɔːrkæst/nounCommon term

In sales & retail, sales forecast means: An estimate of how much a person, team or company will sell in a coming period, based on the pipeline, past results and market conditions.

In Turkish: satış tahmini, satış öngörüsü

How it is used

Used in weekly sales meetings and management reports. You prepare, submit, update or miss a forecast. Reps often sort deals into categories such as commit (very likely), best case and pipeline. It is often just called the forecast.

Example sentences

  1. My sales forecast for this quarter is 420,000, but two big deals are still uncertain.

  2. Head office uses the sales forecast to plan production for the next three months.

Common collocations

  • submit a forecast
  • forecast accuracy
  • commit forecast
  • miss the forecast
  • quarterly forecast
  • sales pipelineAll the potential deals a salesperson or team is working on, arranged by stage from first contact to signed contract, so you can see what is likely to close.
  • opportunityA qualified potential sale that is being actively worked on, with an estimated value and an expected closing date in the CRM.
  • sales targetThe amount of sales, in money or units, that a person, team or store is expected to reach in a given period.
  • win rateThe percentage of sales opportunities that end in a won deal, out of all the opportunities closed as won or lost in a period.
  • sales cycleThe whole sequence of steps from the first contact with a potential customer to the signed deal, and the time this usually takes.

More terms: Targets, Metrics & Commission

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