# One Big Deal Is Holding Your Forecast Hostage

https://salesbond.app/blog/one-big-deal-forecast-pipedrive/
Published: 2026-10-06 · Updated: 2026-10-26

If one deal is more than a third of your quarterly forecast, stop reporting one number and report two: the forecast with that deal and the forecast without it. The one-third line is our working heuristic, not an industry standard; what matters is that a range exists and the owner has seen it. A small team can carry a forecast where a single deal is 40% of the total and the sum still looks healthy. The sum is not the problem. The shape is.

## The total looks fine, the shape does not

Illustrative numbers. Nils runs a four-person sales team. On Monday he reports $310k expected to close this quarter against a $280k target. Eleven open deals. Everyone relaxes.

One of the eleven is a $130k deal with a logistics company: Proposal stage, expected close in week nine, a friendly head of operations as the only contact. The other ten add up to $180k.

So this is really two quarters. If the logistics deal closes, the team beats target. If it slips, the team lands at $180k, about 64% of plan, and the other ten deals cannot close that gap in time. Nils was not lying. He reported a sum when the room needed a shape.

## Two numbers: the biggest deal’s share, and the forecast without it

We call this deal concentration: the share of the quarter’s open forecast that sits in one deal. Both numbers take a minute with a calculator. The share is the value of the largest open deal expected this quarter divided by the total open value expected this quarter: 130 / 310 = 42%. The forecast without it is the total minus that deal: 310 – 130 = $180k.

![Illustrative forecast card: $310k with the largest deal, $180k without it, against a $280k target; the largest deal is 42% of the forecast](https://salesbond.app/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/one-big-deal-forecast-pipedrive-2.png)

Our line is a third. Below it, a slip hurts but the quarter survives. Above it, the quarter is a bet, and we think that is where an owner’s reaction should switch from “fine” to “why wasn’t I told”. Your line may sit at a quarter or a half, depending on how much the business can absorb. The only wrong choice is having no line.

A [weighted forecast](https://salesbond.app/blog/weighted-pipeline-forecast/) does not fix this (discount a 42% deal to 70% and one deal still drives the number), and the question is narrower than [revenue at risk](https://salesbond.app/blog/revenue-at-risk-sales-pipeline/): how much of the quarter depends on one yes.

The same large deal also drags up your [average deal size](https://salesbond.app/blog/average-deal-size-median-pipedrive/) once it is won, which is why the median tells you what a normal deal looks like.

## Where the numbers live in Pipedrive

The Deal revenue forecast report gives you the total; we work out the share in a spreadsheet row.

It places open deals by expected close date and won deals by won time, and leaves lost deals out. The path is Insights > “+” > Report > Revenue forecast > Deal revenue forecast. The Y-axis can show deal value, deal weighted value or a custom monetary field, and the report needs the Growth plan or higher ( [Pipedrive: Deal revenue forecast](https://support.pipedrive.com/en/article/insights-reports-revenue-forecast)). Since won deals show up too, take only the open value for the current quarter as your denominator.

For the numerator, open the Forecast view, which sorts deals by expected close date, deal won time or a custom date field ( [Pipedrive: sorting deals in the forecast view](https://support.pipedrive.com/en/article/how-can-i-sort-deals-in-the-forecast-view-by-a-different-timeframe)). Sort by expected close date, find the largest open deal in the current quarter, and write its value down.

Then divide. Four cells: largest deal, total, share, total without. Update them before every forecast call; the largest deal in week two is not always the largest in week nine, and the row is only useful if its current.

## A big deal gets its own rules

Treating the $130k deal like the other ten is how a concentrated forecast becomes a missed quarter. Ten small deals average out: one slips, one closes early, the total holds. A single big deal does not average with anything, so it gets rules the others do not.

The first rule is about people. Fullcast puts it well: “Single-threaded deals are fragile deals. When an opportunity depends entirely on one champion, a single job change, reorg, or shift in priorities kills it overnight” ( [Fullcast: Deal risk analysis](https://www.fullcast.com/content/deal-risk-analysis/)). We can live with that on a small deal, not on 42% of the quarter. In Pipedrive a deal has one primary linked person, and everyone else involved is added as a participant; the Participants field can be shown in the deal list ( [Pipedrive: Participants](https://support.pipedrive.com/article/participants)). Our rule for any deal over the line: it needs a second participant with a name and a role before it counts in the forecast at all. If the head of operations is the only person on it, Nils has a conversation, not a deal. More on that in [single-threaded deals](https://salesbond.app/blog/single-threaded-deals/).

The second rule is about movement. Every other deal gets reviewed in the the weekly pipeline meeting. The big deal gets a next step every week with a date on it, and the step has to be the buyer’s step, not ours. “Send revised proposal” is our step. “Head of operations presents to the CFO on the 14th” is theirs. When a week passes with no buyer step, the deal stays in Pipedrive, but Nils plans on the forecast without it. That sounds harsh. It is cheaper than a surprise at quarter end.

The third rule is a second date. Ask the buyer when they decide, not when thier project would start. The expected close date is often the day the rep hopes for a signature; the decision date is the meeting where someone says yes or no. We put it in the deal title or a custom field and track it like our own deadline. If it passes without a decision, the deal is not late. It is in trouble, and the forecast without it just became the forecast. If the big deal is signed in parts, split it first: [a phased rollout](https://salesbond.app/blog/phased-rollout-deal-pipedrive/) is two deals, not one.

We build SalesBond, a sales management layer on top of the CRM a team already uses; we started with Pipedrive. Deal Health checks every deal around the clock against the rules a team has switched on, more than 20 of them. It gives each deal a health score and explains which rules the deal breaks. The share stays in your spreadsheet; Deal Health keeps checking the deal you cannot afford to lose. [Check your CRM with SalesBond](https://salesbond.app/).

## Telling the owner a range, not a point

Ramona owns the company. She does not want “$310k” now and “$180k” six weeks later, and she does not want a lecture on forecasting either. She wants to know what to plan for.

Give her two numbers and one condition: “The quarter is $180k without the logistics deal and $310k with it. The deal is 42% of the forecast, which is over our line, so it is running under its own rules: second contact in place, buyer step every week, decision meeting on the 14th. I will tell you on the 15th which number we are planning for.”

Three sentences. Floor, ceiling, why the gap exists, when it closes. We think most owners would rather hear the $180k now than the $310k now and the $180k later; the first is a plan, the second is a surprise. If Ramona needs the $310k for payroll, the two-number report lets that conversation happen in week two. If the rep on the big deal is the optimistic type, read [sandbagging vs. happy ears](https://salesbond.app/blog/sandbagging-vs-happy-ears/). Building the number itself is covered in [bottom-up and top-down forecasting](https://salesbond.app/blog/bottom-up-vs-top-down-forecasting/) and [pipeline coverage](https://salesbond.app/blog/pipeline-coverage-ratio/).

## What happened to Nils

The logistics deal slipped. The CFO meeting moved a month, and the quarter closed at $194k, a little above the floor because one small deal came in early. Ramona had known since week two that $180k was the plan she could count on, so the slip was a disappointment, not a crisis. The deal closed in the first month of the next quarter, with two contacts on it.

The forecast was not more accurate. Nobody can promise that. It was honest about its shape, and that turned out to be the thing worth reporting.