What best case is supposed to mean
Best case holds the deals that can close this period if a small number of named conditions resolve. The word named is doing the work. A best case deal without an articulated open condition is a commit deal the rep is hedging on, or a pipeline deal the rep is optimistic about. Neither belongs in the category.Written properly, the category answers a question leadership actually has: what is the achievable ceiling for this period, and what stands between us and it. Written loosely, it becomes the place deals go when nobody wants to make a call.
The queue managers should work
Commit deals get protected. Best case deals get worked. That difference is the operational reason the category exists.
A useful forecast call spends most of its time here, on one question per deal: what specific action this week would move this deal into commit. The answers are concrete. Get the security questionnaire returned, get procurement to open the file, get the buyer to confirm a signature date. Deals that generate no such answer are not best case, and moving them out is a legitimate outcome of the review.
Reading the commit-to-best-case gap
The distance between commit and best case is one of the more informative numbers in a forecast package, and it is worth tracking as a ratio over time rather than reading in isolation.
A wide gap where best case rarely converts means the criteria for best case are too loose and reps are parking deals there. A narrow gap means either the team is sandbagging or it cannot distinguish validated deals from hopeful ones. Both readings point back to the category criteria rather than to individual deals.
Keep it out of the committed number
Best case should be reported as its own line. Folding it into commit, or reporting a blended figure with weights applied, creates a number no person has committed to and no one can be held to.
The same discipline applies to how the category is used at quarter-end. Pulling best case deals forward with discounting can close a gap in the current period, but ORM points out that most deals already close below the value carried in the CRM, and that the cost of borrowing from future periods is routinely understated. A team whose best case regularly becomes revenue only through discounting is running a pricing problem rather than a forecasting one, and it will show up later in win rate and average deal size before it shows up in the forecast.
For how the categories fit together and what evidence each should require, see sales forecasting and the treatment of coverage versus committed revenue in the 3x pipeline coverage rule is wrong.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does best case mean in a sales forecast?
It means the deal can close this period, and the rep can name the specific conditions still open. Best case is not a confidence score. It is a statement that most closing conditions are validated with a small number outstanding, and the outstanding ones should be written down.
How is best case different from commit?
Commit is the number a leader stakes the period on, with all closing conditions validated. Best case has identified gaps. The practical difference is what each one implies: commit deals get protected, best case deals get worked, and the actions that would move a best case deal into commit are the most useful output of a forecast call.
Should best case be included in the number you report up?
Report it as a separate line, never folded into commit. Leadership needs both the number the team stands behind and the ceiling it is chasing. Adding the two together produces a figure nobody has actually committed to, which is how forecast reviews end with everyone confident and nobody accountable.
What does a narrow gap between commit and best case indicate?
Usually one of two problems. Either the team is sandbagging, holding closeable deals out of commit to build a cushion, or it has no real visibility into deal risk and is placing deals by habit. Both show up the same way in the report, so check the underlying category criteria before concluding which one you have.
Put these metrics to work
ORM builds custom revenue forecast models that turn concepts like best case forecast category into prescriptive action for your team.
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