Stop Trusting Your Sellers. Start Trusting Your Buyers.
Billions in tools and training haven’t solved sales forecasting’s credibility crisis. The missing piece? Measuring buyer confidence instead of seller optimism.
Why You Can’t Trust Forecasts
When the quarter closes and numbers miss, the excuse is almost always the same: “Deals slipped.”
But for CROs, missed forecasts don’t just sting — they carry career risk. Boards lose confidence. CEOs tighten scrutiny. Investors begin questioning whether growth is real or manufactured. In today’s environment, too many misses can cut a CRO’s average tenure — already under 18 months — even shorter.
It’s become a familiar boardroom ritual. CROs deliver forecasts with precision, only to explain a month later why “committed” opportunities vanished into the black hole of no decision. CEOs are frustrated. Boards are skeptical. Sales leaders are exhausted. And yet, despite billions invested in CRM systems, enablement programs, and forecasting tools, accuracy has only gotten worse.
Forecasting in 2025 feels less like financial planning and more like weather prediction—lots of models, but little reliability.
The problem, as it turns out, isn’t the forecast itself. It’s what the forecast is built on.
The Confidence Problem
Most sales forecasts are built on seller confidence—how strongly a rep “feels” about a deal. But as win rates continue to fall and buyer indecision rises, that confidence has proven dangerously misleading.
The real missing ingredient is buyer confidence.
Research shows:
-
59% of deals die in “no decision.”
-
41% of buyers admit they purchased the wrong solution the first time.
-
63% of buyers say they wish salespeople had pushed them harder to think through the problem before buying.
The numbers reveal a stark truth: companies aren’t losing deals to competitors as often as they’re losing to inaction. Buyers simply aren’t confident enough to move forward.
“Sales organizations are measuring the wrong side of conviction,” says Keenan, CEO of ASG. “They’re measuring how sellers feel about the deal. What matters is how buyers feel about the decision.”
The Buyer Confidence Model™
That disconnect is what led ASG to create the Buyer Confidence Model™, a framework designed to measure whether buyers actually have the conviction to act.
The model examines four elements—the 4Cs of Buyer Confidence:
-
Clarity: Do buyers fully understand the problem, its root cause, and the cost of not solving it?
-
Control: Do they feel they own the buying process—pace, milestones, and decision-making—rather than being pushed by the vendor?
-
Consensus: Has the buying group aligned on the problem, impact, and solution?
-
Change Confidence: Do they believe they can successfully execute the change after purchase?
Together, the 4Cs act as a lens to evaluate the true state of a deal.
The Retail SaaS Example
Consider a high-growth SaaS company chasing a $750K deal with a global retailer. On paper, it’s the kind of opportunity CROs love to showcase in pipeline meetings: multithreaded conversations, executive sponsor engagement, technical validation in progress. The CRM tags it at 70% probability.
But a closer look through the 4Cs of the Buyer Confidence Model™ reveals cracks:
-
Clarity: The retailer’s team has seen three demos but still hasn’t quantified the cost of slow store-level reporting. They’re excited by the “what,” but unclear on the “why now.”
-
Control: The retailer’s business stakeholders feel boxed into the vendor’s rigid evaluation process. Deadlines and next steps are dictated externally, leaving them frustrated that their own internal flow isn’t being respected.
-
Consensus: Marketing is aligned, but Finance is balking at the price point, and IT is lobbying for an internal build. Logistics remains unconvinced the platform can integrate with legacy systems.
-
Change Confidence: The CIO’s office isn’t convinced the retailer’s overstretched IT staff can absorb another enterprise rollout this year.
In the CRM, it looks like momentum. In reality, it’s inertia disguised as progress. And when the quarter closes, the “committed” deal never materializes.
This is where the Buyer Confidence Model™ makes the difference: not by telling sellers how to sell, but by giving executives a structured way to measure whether a buyer is actually ready to move.
Beyond Methodologies
Traditional methodologies like MEDDIC, SPICED, or Challenger have their place. They guide reps on what to qualify. But they don’t account for the underlying psychology of buying decisions: whether buyers themselves have the confidence to move forward.
That’s why ASG positions the Buyer Confidence Model™ not as a replacement, but as an overlay—a diagnostic that works across any methodology, providing executives with a clearer picture of deal risk.
In a market where GTM efficiency is under the microscope and CEOs are demanding predictability, that clarity is increasingly non-negotiable.
From Guesswork to Governance
The implications of buyer confidence go beyond forecasting. For CROs, it’s a governance issue. Investors don’t tolerate missed forecasts for long. CEOs can’t make hiring, expansion, or funding decisions based on unreliable data. And enablement leaders can’t prove ROI when deal outcomes don’t match the effort.
What the Buyer Confidence Model™ offers is a shift from rep-driven guesswork to buyer-driven governance. By embedding it into deal reviews and forecast calls, leaders can systematically identify confidence gaps before they become missed quarters.
In other words, it reframes forecasting from an art to a discipline—anchored not in opinion, but in observable buyer behavior.
A System Problem, Not a People Problem
The Buyer Confidence Model™ is one piece of ASG’s broader Problem-Centric Operating System™, which reframes sales enablement as a system issue rather than a people issue. Skills, methodologies, and tools alone aren’t enough. Without reinforcement, inspection, and buyer-anchored forecasting, organizations are left with activity but no reliability.
That system-level view is where CROs and CEOs should focus. Not on the charisma of their sellers, but on the conviction of their buyers.
Because in today’s market, one truth is undeniable: you can’t trust your forecasts—unless you can measure buyer confidence.
