SAME WORD. THREE MEANINGS. ONE MISSED FORECAST.
Too often in our day-to-day discussions with partners and other personal relationships, we waste time...and worse...end up in disagreements simply because we never agreed on the definitions of the words we're using or the timing of certain events. We're too fast or too casual in a text, a voicemail or in syncing calendars until BAM! Little misunderstandings become major disconnects, roadblocks and detours. In my own world of balancing customers, students and venture investments, I'm constantly double and triple checking.
Nowhere is this lack of common language more pronounced than in sales forecasting.
Picture today's Wednesday forecast call. A rep says the Acme deal is "strong." The sales manager hears 70%. The CFO, who has been burned before, quietly haircuts it to 40%. The CEO hears "we're good" and tells the board. Everyone nodded, nobody lied...and somebody is about to miss the quarter.
Here's the ugly truth about performance to quota. Depending on whose data you trust, only about 40-55% of B2B reps have hit quota this year, down from 60-65% before 2022. SPOTIO's 2026 survey of 336 field sales professionals found that nearly two-thirds of teams have most of their reps missing quota, even while revenue grows.
I always make the assumption that most of these salespeople are hardworking, skilled, well trained and love the profession of selling. Why? In our consulting practice, we work with hundreds of salespeople every year, building processes and implementing the tools and technology that improve their productivity. And if missing quota meant bad salespeople, we'd have replaced them all by now. We haven't, because my belief this Wednesday morning, right at the start of the all-important 4th quarter, is that we have a failure of common language in our companies, not a failure of salespeople.
Think about how much we measure: revenue and gross profit by new and existing customers, deal size, geography, channel, calls, conversion steps and more. Way too much! Yet the rep, the manager, the CFO and the CEO still use the same words to mean different things.
Then there's the data. Validity's 2025 survey of CRM users found that 37% of staff regularly fabricate data to tell leaders what they want to hear. I don't think most of that is malice. Some is rose-colored glasses, some is fear, and a lot of it is the room we leave when "qualified" has no definition. If "qualified" means whatever the rep feels, calling a deal qualified isn't fabrication, it's just unmeasurable. And it gets worse. Only 19% of CRM users say leaders actually change course when shown contrary data, while 84% of leaders say they do. Think about what that teaches a rep.
A REAL DEFINITION HAS THREE PARTS:
- A percentage range, backed by your own history.
- A specific step the buyer has taken, not the seller's opinion.
- Agreement from everyone on the sales team who touches the number.
Same language! Same terms! Everyone! Use your own sports analogy. When the Pats were in the huddle in Buffalo last Sunday on the 20-yard line in the 4th quarter, nobody asked: "what do you mean by that?"
I'm a sales nerd, always focused on the data, so here's an example from the world I work in with our customers. Your world is very different, so come up with your own definitions in your own language. The percentages are only placeholders. Use your own Q4 2025/H1 2026 close rates:
- Qualified (SQL): decision maker identified (10-20%)
- Discovery completed: (25%)
- Discovery validated: (35%)
- Data gathering, demos, management touchpoints: (40%)
- Business-Use-Case: ROI presented to decision makers (50%)
- Implementation plan agreed: timelines, owners (60-80%)
- Commit: paper in legal and procurement (90%+)
- Win: (100%)
Now the Q4 rule.
We have about 50 real selling days left. No new definitions mid-quarter and no exceptions: if the step hasn't happened, the deal doesn't advance a stage, and it doesn't count in the number you hand your CFO. In HubSpot or SFDC, make the step a required field before a deal can move. Then the CEO, the CFO, the head of Sales and your newest rep are all reading the same scoreboard in the same words.
So, here's the question to take into your next forecast call: if I asked you, a top performing AE, the VP of Sales, your newest sales rep, your CFO and your CEO to each write "qualified" on the whiteboard, how many different answers would I get?
Enjoy today, this week and this stretch of both perfect fall weather and the excitement of Q4 selling!
Got a question of how, it's done...just connect with me anytime.
Jack is a Managing Partner of Derby Management, a strategy consulting firm, and founder of the Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts University, where he has taught for 20 years. Every semester is significantly updated, with heavy emphasis in 2026 on AI in Marketing & Sales. At Derby Management, Jack and his team architect and build business strategies focused on sales and marketing processes, tools, and technology platforms.
www.derbymanagement.com | Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts
