Assumptions are used to help set your plan goals. The purpose of assumptions is to build up your plan goal with assumed changes or performance levels over the course of your plan, ultimately building up to your overall revenue goal.
Like initiatives, assumptions are generally positive improvements. For example:
- Increase the efficiency of the outbound team to convert Opportunities to Close won by 5% by the end of Q3
- Increase ACV through a pricing change at the start of Q2
- Run a marketing campaign to increase MQLs by 500 per month over a 3-month period
- Decrease churn by 10% by the end of the year
Assumptions can also be negative, which are added to the plan to reflect reality. These are rarer but an important part of planning. For example:
- Reduce the number of qualified leads by 20% in the second half of the year due to expected market conditions.
When planning, you may already know of concrete actions your GTM teams will be making over the plan period. In this case, add an assumption to reflect the planned change and then copy it over as an initiative → this will save you time in building your plan.