Why Your Budget-Setting Process Is Built on Theatre, Not Traction

It’s August. You can almost hear it—the distant drumroll of Q4 approaching.

And with it, the return of a familiar tradition: the annual budgeting spectacle.

Spreadsheets are warming up. Sales forecasts are being pre-fluffed.

And soon, teams across the business will dive headfirst into the most time-consuming performance of the year.

Somewhere between bottom-up estimates and top-down ambition, a number will emerge:

“We’ll hit 12% market share next year.”

It’ll be declared with confidence. Nodded at in leadership meetings.

Maybe even make it into investor decks.

But if you step into the hallway after the call?

Most people don’t actually believe it.

The Great Forecasting Illusion

In many companies, forecasting share of market has become more ritual than rigor. The process looks collaborative—territory reviews, performance trends, capacity assessments—but it’s theatre.

The truth is, most forecasts are built backwards.

1. Start with what leadership wants to hear

2. Break it down into how it could hypothetically work

3. Massage assumptions to match the ambition

4. Pressure-fit it into "alignment"

By the end, you’ve got a polished target that looks great on slides—

but feels like fiction on the ground.

Time-Consuming, Misaligned, and Misused

Let’s be honest: the forecasting process devours weeks—sometimes months—of leadership bandwidth.

Endless back-and-forth between HQ and the field.

Debates over decimals.

Assumptions layered on assumptions.

All to arrive at a number that gets locked in—and then mostly ignored the moment reality deviates.

Instead of driving clarity, it becomes a compromise between hope and hierarchy.

The Core Problem? Forecasting Tries to Predict What Must Be Earned

Market share isn’t handed out based on effort.

It’s earned through:

✅ Product-market fit

✅ Execution consistency

✅ Customer trust

✅ Strategic focus

✅ Real capability, not just calendar capacity

You can’t spreadsheet your way to traction. You have to build it.

Forecasts don’t win share. Fit and follow-through do.

What to Do Instead: Shift from Forecasting to Readiness

• Replace “What number can we hit?” with “What traction have we earned?”

Ground your growth plans in validated performance patterns—not extrapolated ambition.

• Reframe the forecast as a stress test, not a prediction.

Use it to test assumptions, surface risks, and align on resource gaps—not to impress the board.

• Invest that time into capacity and capability audits.

If you’re spending 6 weeks on forecasting, spend at least 2 on testing if your teams are truly delivery-readyBlog_09.

• Ditch the false consensus.

Alignment isn’t everyone nodding yes in a Teams call. It’s people trusting the number enough to plan around it.

The Bottom Line

Your market share isn’t forecasted in a spreadsheet.

It’s earned in the field. In product usage. In conversion rates. In customer wins and competitive losses.

So the next time you kick off that forecasting season, ask yourself:

Are we designing for belief and delivery—or are we just repeating the ritual?

Because investors may care about your forecast.

But your customers couldn’t care less.

They won’t reward ambition.

They’ll reward value.

And value is earned—one decision, one experience, one win at a time.