Podcast S2E17: 6 Numbers Every B2B Revenue Leader Must Model (Part 2)
Sales forecasting for B2B teams starts with math, not hope. Steve Whittington breaks down the revenue bridge that turns last year's number and a whiteboard target into an engineered plan your team can execute.
In part two of the Revenue Factory mathematical modeling series, Steve walks through how to combine your expansion rate, book of business, win rate, sales velocity, and average deal size into a top-down, bottom-up forecast. Then he shows how to cascade that number into pipeline coverage, marketing qualified lead volume, and per-motion efficiency — so every gap becomes a specific math problem with a specific fix.
In this episode:
- How to build a revenue bridge from existing book of business to annual target using expansion rate and account tiers
- Using win rate, sales velocity, and average transaction size to calculate required pipeline coverage per quarter
- Waterfall math for marketing qualified leads, conversion rates, and per-motion efficiency (trade shows vs. paid ads)
- Why trade show leads may outperform Google Ads — and how to spot inefficient acquisition motions
- How to translate all six revenue factory components into a simple scorecard your BD team can act on Monday morning
Key takeaways:
- Your revenue number is not a target — it's an output. It's the result of what you spend to acquire customers, what you spend to keep them, whether your existing book is growing or eroding, and how efficient your motions are at creating opportunity.
- Real forecasting is top-down and bottom-up. Start with your existing book of business, apply your historical expansion rate, validate account-by-account on tier one and tier two, then calculate the true delta the sales team has to close with new business.
- The pipeline coverage math is a three-legged stool: win rate, sales velocity, and average transaction size. If you need 2–3 wins per quarter at a 50% close rate, you need 4–6 net-new opportunities in pipeline — not a vibe, a number.
- When performance is off, it's a math problem, not a motivation problem. If MQLs are short but conversion is holding, the fix isn't 'try harder' — it's identifying which motion needs to produce more volume to feed the model.
If you found this valuable, make sure to subscribe to Driving Growth wherever you get your podcasts for more strategies on building a scalable revenue engine. New episodes are available on the first and third Wednesday of each month.
Three Ways to Strengthen Your Go-To-Market System:
The Go-To Market Readiness Index
Benchmark your strategy, sales execution, and revenue systems against peers.
→ Free to Participate
The 2025 Benchmark Report
See how Canadian B2B companies are performing across the five pillars of go-to-market maturity.
→ Free to Download
The Growth Table - Peer Advisory Program
Monthly peer sessions for revenue leaders from non-competing B2B companies.
→ Just $295 / month
Follow Roadmap on social media for more great content!
- LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/roadmapagency
- Instagram: instagram.com/weareroadmap/
- Facebook: facebook.com/weareroadmap
- YouTube: youtube.com/@roadmapagency
Would you like us to implement a similar strategy for you?
Book a Discovery Call
