With about two decades of experience in RevOps, you can probably imagine the endless number of forecasting calls I’ve been a part of. I liken the process to the world’s slowest game of hot potato, passing around half-baked deals until someone gets burned. No one enjoys forecasting and yet it’s the one ritual an entire sales team has to participate in every week.
I feel a little different about forecasting now than I did before my time as the VP of Revenue Operations and Field Strategy at People.ai. It has a lot to do with how we define forecasting here. We believe forecasting leaves out the bias, office politics, and guesswork to uncover the true state of your pipeline. It’s a comprehensive overview of everything in your GTM stack—emails, calls, intent, CRM data—to give you the insights you need to forecast with credibility.
What Forecasting Used to Steal from My Day
Before People.ai, forecasting took up a major part of my day. It was a total time killer. Here’s what a typical day looked like:
Morning: Data Dump
My morning was wasted combing through multiple spreadsheets, chasing down reps to fill in the CRM with their latest notes and prepping for yet another forecasting call. My data was always incomplete, fueling inaccurate forecasts week after week.
Midday: Meeting Redundancy
Back-to-back meetings consisted of reports about the same exact deals we had been talking about for weeks with no real progress to show for it. If I wasn’t in a forecasting call, I was most likely stuck in deal reviews or 1-on-1s drilling over ways to bring these deals to a close.
Afternoon: Narrative Crafting
After a full day of calls, I would spend the rest of my time connecting dots by hand to construct a narrative that balanced pleasing the board and leaning towards reality. This was often done with unreliable forecasting software and a deep dive into my CRM. All of the data I uncovered simply supported whatever story I wanted to tell with no real accuracy.
Time Spent: 6 hours
Modern Forecasting with People.ai
Things have really changed since People.ai released their forecasting tool. Now, I spend my day tapping into my skillset of strategizing, improving efficiency and driving growth. Forecasting no longer consumes my week. Here’s what it looks like now:
Step 1- I open Salesforce and navigate to People.ai’s engagement dashboards for a quick overview.
Step 2- Next, I quickly review commits, best cases and pipeline totals in real-time across various territories. The best part? It’s all in one place.
Step 3- Once I have the full picture, I ask my SalesAI assistant for deal summaries on at-risk accounts and direct my team for next steps.
Time Spent: 10 minutes
It’s nearly impossible to own your number with confidence without the right data. There are a lot of forecasting solutions out there that claim to provide this but simply don’t live up to the hype. People.ai has spent nearly a decade curating sales intelligence that doesn’t just collect data, it matches and enriches it so you get the full story behind every deal.
People.ai’s forecasting tool delivers with:
- Custom AI Agents trained on your revenue model and sales motion that give you precise, data-driven forecasts, replacing guesswork.
- Current activity capture—emails, calls, meetings, transcripts—summarized for instant visibility.
- Opportunity-level insights like engagement metrics, scorecards, and risk signals for full transparency into pipeline health.
- Customizable forecasting views to match any revenue structure.
Why RevOps Leaders Need This Today
RevOps leaders don’t need to spend the day reconstructing reality from fragments of incomplete data—they need visibility, foresight, and clarity. AI delivers exactly that: accurate forecasting, intelligent risk signals, and unified pipeline views.
- Trustworthy forecasts build executive confidence and accelerate decision-making.
- Proactivity replaces reactivity with instant alerts and intelligent nudges that help teams pivot before problems escalate.
- Strategic thinking replaces reporting headaches with actionable insights that drive smarter, faster decisions.
- Team alignment becomes second nature with shared, data-backed insights that give leaders the visibility they need to coach reps.
Ready to stop fighting forecast fires and start commanding them? Let’s explore how AI can transform your forecasting, empower teams, and streamline your workflow.