In most B2B technology companies, from $100 million to $1 billion in revenue, annual planning season follows a predictable script. Finance collects inputs, revenue leaders present funnel assumptions, product teams outline their roadmap, and operations commits to delivery timelines.
Then comes the centerpiece: a forecast that attempts to unify all these assumptions into a single view of the future.
For decades, this forecast, annual, quarterly, or rolling, has been treated as the cornerstone of strategic financial planning. Board decks, functional budgets, hiring plans, and corporate KPIs all cascade from it.
But there’s an inconvenient truth every experienced CFO and CSO already knows:
Forecasts don’t drive success. Goals do.
Forecasts describe the future.
Goals create the future.
And in a world where B2B tech companies face rising volatility, macro uncertainty, elongating sales cycles, and shrinking margin tolerance, the traditional forecasting-first model is no longer just inadequate, it’s becoming harmful.
This article explains why success begins with good goal setting (not forecasting), what good goal setting actually means in modern finance organizations, and how CFOs and CSOs can operationalize it to drive clarity, alignment, accountability, and performance across the business.
Forecasting was originally meant to inform goal setting, not replace it. Yet in many growth-stage tech companies, the opposite has happened.
Finance teams have become excellent at projecting current trajectory forward using past data to estimate future results. But a company’s desired future is rarely a straight extension of its past. When forecasting becomes the dominant planning mechanism, several issues appear.
Leaders hesitate to commit to ambitious goals if they don’t appear in the model. This leads to:
Forecasting ends up driving risk aversion rather than alignment.
Finance teams get rewarded for reducing forecast error rather than affecting the business. Business teams get rewarded for “hitting the forecast” even when the outcomes aren’t meaningful.
Precision quietly replaces performance.
Because forecasts rely heavily on historical data:
By the time the forecast reflects reality, the moment for action is already gone.
Each department submits assumptions based on its own incentives. The final rolled-up forecast becomes a negotiation, not a shared truth.
No wonder many CFOs quietly admit:
“Our forecasts are accurate… but useless.”
This is why high-performing finance and strategy teams are shifting away from forecasting-led planning.
Elite B2B tech organizations, both public and private, now begin annual planning with a different question:
“What must we achieve for the business to meaningfully improve?”
Not:
“What does the model say we will likely achieve?”
This mindset repositions the forecast as an input, not the driver. In a goal-driven planning environment:
This is especially powerful for companies between $100M and $1B, where complexity is high but alignment is still achievable. Achievable and impact is measurable.
The CFO controls the allocation of resources: capital, talent, and time. When planning is dominated by forecasting, the CFO’s role becomes limited to prediction and reporting.
Goal-driven planning elevates finance into a strategic partner.
Good goals make the company answer questions such as:
Forecasts alone never trigger these conversations.
A meaningful goal requires a corresponding sacrifice. A forecast usually pretends tradeoffs don’t exist.
For example: If the company wants to reduce churn by 25%, it must invest in Customer Success, even if the forecast doesn’t demand it.
If the company sets a goal of 20% ARR growth, Sales and Product must sequence priorities around that target, not around a forecast suggesting lower growth.
Forecast misses are easy to rationalize.
Goal misses require explanation.
As CFOs increasingly play the role of organizational truth-teller, goals give them the authority and clarity to enforce accountability.
The CSO’s role is to translate ambition into execution. Goal-driven planning fits this responsibility perfectly.
While CFOs set constraints and metrics, CSOs:
When planning begins with “What’s likely?”, the CSO loses the ability to reshape what’s possible.
Every major shift, new markets, new products, new pricing, they all started as a goal, not a forecast.
“Goal setting” is one of the most overused phrases in business. Most organizations do it poorly. Good goal setting in a $100M–$1B B2B tech company includes four non-negotiables:
These should reflect the business’s most important health drivers, such as:
Finance and Strategy must translate company-level goals into:
Every team should be able to answer:
“What is our role in achieving the company’s goals?”
Great goal systems put equal pressure on:
Forecasting alone cannot do that because it's designed to predict, not correct.
This isn’t about eliminating forecasting.
It’s about ensuring the forecast serves the goal—not the other way around.
When the forecast and goals conflict, leadership must decide whether:
This is where real planning maturity emerges.
Here’s a simple, repeatable framework used by top-performing mid-market finance organizations:
No more than 3–5. These are the backbone of the plan.
These should map directly to the goals.
Not as the origin point.
Ensure teams have autonomy but no ambiguity.
Goals → KPIs → forecast updates.
High-performing teams double down.
Underperforming initiatives lose capital or talent.
This approach produces what forecasts never could:
A company aligned around a small number of high-impact outcomes, executing together.
Forecasts will always play an important role in financial planning. They inform risks, support Board reporting, guide cash management, and help model scenarios.
But forecasts don’t build high-performance companies. Goals do.
When CFOs and CSOs lead with goals first:
Success begins with good goal setting. Forecasting is simply one of the tools you use along the way.
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