First, remove all opportunities that have exceeded their shelf life. If your average sales cycle is three months but you have proposed opportunities that are six to nine months old, the probability of closing those opportunities is almost zero; kill them or send them back to nurturing.
After those deals are removed from the pipeline, apply a basic revenue factoring approach to remaining opportunities. A conservative approach is to count on 30 percent of the revenue associated with qualified opportunities that are proposed and in a closing stage. This makes allowances for actual close rates as well as deals that come in below the original forecast. You can now calculate your revenue “go get” by subtracting your factored revenue pipeline from your 2010 objective. Our Revenue Planning Tool helps you with all the calculations.