Targets vs Forecasts: How Many Enquiries Do You Actually Need?

Most growth plans contain a number that someone wants and a number that the data supports, and the two are often treated as the same thing. They are not. A target is what you want to happen. A forecast is what your own data says is likely to happen if nothing changes. Both are useful, as long as you keep them apart and look honestly at the gap.

For a B2B or high-ticket business, the most practical place to start is with a simple question: how many enquiries do we actually need?

Targets and forecasts: what each one is for

A target is a decision. It comes from the business plan, the board or the owner, and it should be specific, measurable and tied to a date. Its job is to give the team a direction.

A forecast is an estimate. It comes from historical data, such as GA4, your CRM and your ad accounts, and its job is to tell you what is realistic. Never adjust a forecast to make the plan look better; at that point it is just a second target.

The useful part is comparing them. If the forecast sits comfortably above the target, you can plan for capacity. If it sits well below, you know early that something has to change, whether that is the channels, the budget, the website or the target itself.

Working backwards: from revenue goal to website visits

The cleanest way to set an enquiry target is to start with revenue and work backwards through your own funnel. Every stage has a conversion rate, and you should use yours, taken from the CRM, rather than an industry average.

Example (hypothetical round numbers, for illustration only):

Step	Assumption	Result
New business revenue goal	for the year	£600,000
Average deal value	from your CRM	£30,000
Deals needed	£600,000 ÷ £30,000	20
Proposal win rate	1 in 4 proposals wins	80 proposals
Qualified enquiry to proposal	half of qualified enquiries get a proposal	160 qualified enquiries
Share of enquiries that are qualified	40%	400 enquiries
Website visit to enquiry rate	1.5%	about 26,700 visits

So, in this example, the goal of £600,000 translates into roughly 33 enquiries and 2,200 website visits a month.

Three things make this calculation more honest:

• Not every enquiry comes from the website. If a third come from referrals or events, take those out before you calculate the traffic you need.
• Sales cycles create a lag. If deals typically take four months to close, this year’s revenue depends partly on last year’s enquiries, and this year’s enquiries pay off partly next year.
• Use the rates you can measure. If you cannot yet tell which enquiries were qualified or which became proposals, fixing that tracking is the first job. Our article on what counts as a website conversion covers how to define and measure enquiries properly.

The same arithmetic also helps with investment decisions. If one average deal is worth £30,000, it is easy to see what a better website or a stronger campaign needs to produce to pay for itself; we use the same logic in how much a website costs in the UK.

Seasonality: the same target is not the same every month

Dividing an annual target by twelve is convenient but rarely accurate. Many B2B businesses see quieter weeks in August and around Christmas, busier periods after budgets are approved, and sector-specific peaks such as the end of a financial year or the start of a building season.

Look at two or three years of monthly enquiries and work out what share of the year each month normally contributes. Then spread the annual target in the same proportions. A month that has historically delivered 5% of the year’s enquiries should not carry the same target as a month that delivered 12%.

Simple, honest forecasting methods

You do not need complex software to forecast enquiries. A few simple methods, applied consistently, are usually more useful than a sophisticated model nobody understands.

• Moving average. The average of the last three (or six) months. A reasonable baseline when there is no strong trend or seasonality.
• Year-on-year. Take the same month last year and apply your recent growth rate. Simple, and it respects seasonality.
• Seasonal naive. Assume next March will look like last March. A surprisingly hard benchmark to beat; any fancier method should at least do better.
• Linear trend. Fit a straight line through your monthly figures to see whether enquiries are rising or falling over time, and by roughly how much.
• Spend vs enquiries. A basic regression of monthly ad spend against enquiries shows how enquiry volume has responded to budget in the past. It describes your history, not a guarantee, and returns usually shrink as spend grows.

More advanced models exist. Exponential smoothing (including versions that handle seasonality), ARIMA and Prophet can capture trend and seasonality together and are worth considering when you have several years of clean monthly data. With a few dozen enquiries a month, though, the extra sophistication rarely changes the decision.

Forecast a range, not a single number

A forecast of “34 enquiries next month” implies a precision that does not exist. With small numbers, random variation is large: if a business averages around 33 enquiries a month, a month in the mid-20s or around 40 can happen without anything having changed.

A practical way to build a range is to test your method on the past. Pretend it is twelve months ago, forecast each month, and see how far off you were. Use that typical error to give a low, central and high figure. Reporting “28 to 40, most likely 34” leads to better conversations than one confident number.

Review monthly, and keep the funnel in view

A forecast is only useful if it is updated. Once a month, compare three things for each stage of the funnel: the target, the forecast and the actual. Look at the conversion rates as well as the volumes. If enquiries are on target but proposals are not, the problem is in qualification or sales follow-up, not in marketing.

This is far easier with one shared report than with a spreadsheet rebuilt every month; see our guide to automated reporting with Looker Studio.

When the forecast and the target do not match

If the forecast says 300 enquiries and the target says 400, you have a gap of about 100 enquiries to explain. There are four levers, and it is usually worth working through them in this order:

1. Improve conversion rates. A clearer offer, a shorter form, faster mobile pages and quicker follow-up can lift enquiries from the traffic you already have. It is often the cheapest lever.
2. Shift between channels. Compare cost per qualified enquiry, not cost per click, across search, paid social, SEO and referrals, and move effort towards the channels that produce qualified leads.
3. Increase budget, with eyes open. If paid search brings qualified enquiries at a known cost in your account, the gap gives you a rough budget figure. Treat it as a starting point, because the next pound usually works less hard than the last.
4. Revisit the target. If none of the above can close the gap credibly, a revised target agreed early is better than a missed one explained late.

If the forecast is comfortably above target, the questions change: can the sales team handle the volume, and should you raise the bar on lead quality instead?

For help with the paid side of this, see our Google Ads and Meta Ads management; for the measurement side, our Google Analytics and Tag Manager service.

Key takeaways

• A target is what you want; a forecast is what your data says is likely. Keep them separate.
• Work backwards from the revenue goal to deals, proposals, qualified enquiries and website visits, using your own conversion rates.
• Spread annual targets by your real seasonal pattern, not evenly across twelve months.
• Simple methods (moving averages, year-on-year, seasonal naive, linear trend) are usually enough; always report a range.
• Review monthly, and when forecast and target diverge, look at conversion rates first, then channels, budget and the target itself.

If you would like to know how many enquiries your business really needs, and how likely you are to get them, get in touch with Tatitech.