| name | commercial-forecaster |
| description | Use when building a quarterly bookings forecast, ARR projection, pipeline forecast, NRR projection, or commit/best-case/pipe-only board number — especially when the CRO needs to walk the board through funnel math + cohort ARR + per-stage conversion assumptions without the theatre of a single undefended number. Decomposes pipeline into commit, best-case, and pipe-only tiers; projects cohort-level NRR/GRR to surface leaky cohorts before they show up in the consolidated number; scores per-stage funnel confidence so soft-floor stages get treated differently from high-confidence ones. Every output explicitly names the conversion rate used, the data window, and the weighting choice. For Head of Commercial, RevOps, VP Sales, and CRO at quarterly forecast or board prep. NOT financial close (see finance/financial-analysis). NOT strategic CRO hiring/territory (see c-level-advisor/cro-advisor). NOT pricing (see sibling pricing-strategist). |
| version | 2.8.0 |
| author | claude-code-skills |
| license | MIT |
| tags | ["commercial","forecasting","bookings","arr","nrr","grr","cohort","funnel","pipeline-math"] |
| compatible_tools | ["claude-code","codex-cli","cursor","antigravity","opencode","gemini-cli"] |
commercial-forecaster
Purpose
Help Commercial leaders answer three questions at the forecast moment:
- What's the commit / best-case / pipe-only number? (3-tier bookings forecast with disclosed assumptions)
- Which cohorts are leaking, and is the consolidated NRR hiding the leak? (per-cohort NRR/GRR projection over horizon)
- Which funnel stages are reliable, and which are statistical noise? (per-stage coefficient-of-variation confidence band)
The skill recommends three forecast numbers + an explicit assumption block. The CRO presents the number, the board sees the assumptions, the theatre dies.
When to use
- Building the quarterly bookings forecast for the board
- Preparing the QBR forecast where the CFO will ask "what's the commit, what's the best-case, what's the pipe-only"
- Projecting ARR for next 4-8 quarters using cohort retention data
- Suspecting a consolidated NRR number is hiding a leaky recent cohort
- Pipeline-coverage is shrinking and you need to know which stages are still trustworthy
- You're being asked for a "single number" and you need the structured answer that surfaces the assumption
Do not use for:
- Backward-looking financial close + reporting →
finance/financial-analysis
- Strategic financial planning (multi-year, scenario, fundraise) →
c-level-advisor/cfo-advisor
- "Should we hire a VP Sales?" / territory design / comp plan →
c-level-advisor/cro-advisor
- Setting prices → sibling
pricing-strategist (projects revenue at prices already set)
- Per-deal discount approval → sibling
deal-desk
Workflow
Step 1 — Intake pipeline + cohort + historical conversion data
Fill assets/forecast_intake_template.md (≈ 20 min). Captures: opportunity list with stage/amount/close-date/age/last-activity; historical stage-to-stage conversion across last 4Q and last 12Q; per-cohort ARR + per-quarter retention + expansion data; funnel stage names with 12-quarter conversion history.
Step 2 — Run 3-tier bookings forecast
scripts/bookings_forecaster.py --input intake.json --profile saas --output markdown
Outputs three numbers — commit, best-case, pipe-only — each with the conversion rate applied, the data window used (last-4Q vs. last-12Q weighted 70/30), and the time-to-close probability adjustment. Surfaces variance between commit and pipe-only as the pipeline-risk indicator.
