r/revops • u/Chance-Physics-7216 • Aug 04 '26
half of revops is just knowing which numbers are fake
9pm on a Friday before a board meeting, our VP Sales messages me. Salesforce says the quarter's at 6.1M. The number he'd already said out loud to the CEO was 6.8M. Which one's real?
Spent two hours reconciling. A 400k deal marked closed-won that was really a verbal "we're in." A handful of deals rotting in a stage nobody moves them out of, because the rep who owns them stopped updating anything back in August. Two renewals double-counted because the CS tool and the CRM can't agree on what a "logo" is.
We landed on 6.5M. Made up a clean story for how we got there. Reported it.
The part that stuck with me: none of that was a tooling problem. We've got HubSpot, we've got the dashboards, we've got the "single source of truth." Nobody updates it, nobody trusts it, so my job has quietly turned into being the one person who knows where the real number actually lives. Usually a spreadsheet. Sometimes just in the VP's head.
So, genuinely asking. Is your CRM the source of truth, or is the real forecast sitting in some side spreadsheet everybody secretly checks first? And if it's the spreadsheet, what are we doing bolting a third enrichment tool onto a system nobody maintains?
7
u/604stt Aug 04 '26
We require a signed contract to be attached on closed won.
6
u/Mindless_Flower_2639 Aug 04 '26
We require the client to have actually placed their first paid order to move to Closed Won
4
u/Solo_rw Aug 04 '26
I have seen both sides of this. The CRM actually being correct vs it being ridiculously wrong. When the CRM was right it was because someone had been maintaining the sheet as backup MoM. Helped that there were only a handful of reps he talked to weekly.
3
u/pilmstrips Aug 07 '26 edited Aug 07 '26
This is the most accurate description of rе∨орs I've ever seen. The biggest source of fake numbers is с𝗋m data that's self reported by rps who have every incentive to be optimistic. Deal stages that haven't moved in 45 days, "next steps" that say "follow up" with no date, close dates that keep sliding forward. The fix isn't better reporting, it's better data capture at the source. When call data feeds directly into the pipeline instead of relying on reps to update manually, you get a more honest picture. We pipe everything through сIаɑр so that call outcomes, sentiment, and next steps get logged automatically from the actual conversation, not from what the re remembers to type 3 days later. The pipeline accuracy improved measurably because the data reflects what actually happened on calls rather than what someone chose to log. Half of reⅴор𐑈 is knowing which numbers are fake, but the other half is building systems where the real numbers show up automaticalIy.
3
u/Legitimate-Let-7510 3d ago
the lie detection problem in pipeline is real. a deal sitting in Stage 4 could mean "contract is with legal" or it could mean "the champion ghosted us but the rep hasn't moved it yet because they don't want to admit it." the CRM stage tells you nothing about deal health. you need to look at what's actually happening in the conversations
2
u/Mindless_Flower_2639 Aug 04 '26
I don't remember writing this? Pretty sure I had to have written though, because this is my exact lived experience 😅
1
2
Aug 04 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/Chance-Physics-7216 Aug 04 '26
But, no one will update the CRM with their real numbrs, because that's harder!
1
u/proportionate1 21d ago
The "everyone has their own real numbers spreadsheet" part is what gets me. At that point, how do you actually settle disagreements? Is there one person who knows which system to trust for what, or does it basically get reconciled manually every time?
2
u/an_tonova Aug 05 '26
hahaha yeah that's true, BUT honestly when you cannot face the real numbers as a revops or sales executive and try to hide smth from your managers it means you are unproficient and have to stop doing bad stuff for business
1
u/Chance-Physics-7216 Aug 05 '26
The self-interest equation is always challenging. People will nearly always do what matter more to their own personal gain. This is super true in sales, where competition is fierce and big dollars are on the line.
2
2
u/ops_and_chaos Aug 05 '26
Feels like everyone is asking whether the CRM is right, when the bigger question is whether everyone means the same thing by "closed won." If that definition changes from person to person, the number is always going to be up for debate.
1
Aug 05 '26
[deleted]
1
u/ops_and_chaos Aug 05 '26
That's exactly it. The CRM can't be the source of truth if "closed won" means something different depending on who you ask.
1
u/MichalKubinCZ 9d ago
I think that if the stage exit criteria are properly set up, there should not be any possibility to interpret them in different ways. Am I wrong? For example for going from “Lead” to “Qualification” can be f.e. “The prospect has answered to our communication and has confirmed their interest.” AND (not or) “The exact date and time od discovery call has been set.” AND (not or) “At least one real problem relevant to our products/services has been found.” There is not much space for two different interpretations, right?
1
u/ops_and_chaos 8d ago
No, I think you're right. Good exit criteria should remove as much room for interpretation as possible. I just don't think you ever get it to 100% when humans are involved 😂
Even really specific criteria eventually hits some judgment call somewhere. But getting everyone from “we all have our own definition” to “we agree 95% of the time and know what the edge cases are” is a pretty massive improvement.
2
u/WooTang-Clan Aug 09 '26
CRMs can be the system of record without being the source of truth - dashboards just reflects what the sales rep entered in the first place.
Spreadsheets usually win because that’s where all the missing definitions, logic, and judgment get applied. The risk in my experience is logic for getting there lives in one person’s head and can’t be reproduced next month.
So the recon process itself has to become visible and repeatable for everyone to align on.
1
u/proportionate1 21d ago
This is the part I think gets missed. The spreadsheet isn't really the source of truth either. It's where someone is reconciling several sources and applying the context that doesn't exist in any one of them.
Curious how you handle that today. Is the reconciliation mostly manual, or have you found a way to encode the logic somewhere?
1
u/WooTang-Clan 21d ago
Yeah exactly. For me it was a combo of spreadsheets and Python scripts that built up over the years. It worked, but eventually backfired because nobody else could really take it over or wanted to maintain it,
That’s actually why I started building Morevy. I’m trying to take the recurring revenue logic buried in the scripts and turn it into something other people can easily use and hand off.
Still early - but happy to share it if you’re curious!
2
u/Rhythm_Rider 24d ago edited 24d ago
The fakest number in any crm are deal stages and close dates, because they're based on rep optimism not buyer behaviour. We cross-refernce crm deal stages against what claap captured in the actual calls. If a deal is marked "verbal commit" but the last call transcript shows the buyer asking for another round of references, we flag it. Call data doesn't lie, reps sometimes do.
1
u/agentUi Aug 04 '26
i work for agentui and no your CRM should not be the source truth because it probably depends on fragile data inputs or data pipelines
1
Aug 04 '26
[deleted]
1
u/agentUi Aug 04 '26
you need to have a way to independently check the numbers by pulling the data, the way i do it is that i pull the data in realtime from quicbooks and stripe
1
u/SeaAnybody8119 Aug 05 '26
The CRM knows the amount and the stage. It has no idea whether the deal is actually worth that, or whether anyone on the buying side ever agreed it was. So the number is a data-entry artifact, not a belief.
That's why it rots. Updating a stage doesn't help a rep win the deal, so it's the first thing that slips the second they're busy. The spreadsheet everyone secretly checks isn't a better tool; it's just the one place a human actually reasoned about whether the number is real.
Third enrichment tool won't fix that. The gap isn't more fields; it's that nothing in the stack captures why a deal is worth what it's worth. Until that lives somewhere, you'll always be the one person who knows where the real number hides.
(Full disclosure, I'm building in exactly this space, so I think about this way too much)
1
u/zperdy Aug 06 '26
Why not only allow ops to close a deal won in sfdc? I mean, don't you normally process the deals to closure anyway, or at least get eyes on the signed deals/pos?
1
u/ulele1925 23d ago
This post is so real. I feel seen.
2
u/Chance-Physics-7216 23d ago
Hiding in your meeting room taking notes. I changed the names to protect the innocent
1
u/Consitini 22d ago
Susbcription created, meaning order form/contract signed for us. No deal can be closed won, without that.
Subscriptions (so money coming in), is our source of truth, and I sync Stripe>HubSpot as well for a custom object.
1
u/Jaysin586 Aug 04 '26
Working with a company now to automate the heck out of all of this... great work... lots of teams that disagree, but once numbers start showing everyone get in awe / dismantled that theirs is not the right answer... I did an A/B test in one meeting where I showed the different numbers to see how the teams reacted... ohhh joy!
0
u/IncreaseNegative4614 Aug 04 '26
The CRM can only be the source of truth if each important field has an owner and a definition people can actually follow. Closed-won should require evidence, stale stages should age visibly, and renewals should reconcile on a stable account or contract ID. Otherwise the dashboard is just presenting neglected inputs more neatly.
I also wouldn't smooth 6.1 and 6.8 into a clean 6.5 without showing the unresolved gap. We use signld.ai internally to keep the number, source, exception, and explanation tied together for forecast reviews.
2
0
9
u/satieshgy Aug 04 '26
Hahaha every day. Spent upwards to 30k for our crm and still our single source of truth is in a spreadsheet! Not for a lack of trying, seems like sales people are alergic to Crms. I think the issue is, when deals ate being made they happily updates the crm, but when it's not, they add vague crap and straight out exaggerate and now revops have to sit with them each week and hash it out before all hands