“Trend data beats tales. Avoid being seduced by the story.”
It’s a trap as old as sales itself.
You enter a new market with no historical data. You’ve got boots on the ground, a few warm introductions, and a charismatic team who can work a room, play the golf days, and fill your ears with stories about “the one that got away” or the “big deal just around the corner.”
It all sounds promising.
Until you look under the bonnet and realise there’s not much there.
In mature markets, you’ve got the trend data. You know your deal cadence. You understand conversion rates. You can tell the difference between noise and signal because you’ve seen the movie before.
In a new market, you don’t have that luxury. You’re working with gut feel, second-hand market intelligence, and the compelling optimism of people who, by nature, want to tell you things are going brilliantly.
Humans are wired for stories.
We remember them better than facts. We’re programmed to respond to them — to feel warm and positive when someone paints a vivid picture of opportunities lining up, handshakes done, deals nearly across the line.
“Humans are programmed to remember stories, but they’re no substitute for measurable progress.”
That’s fine for dinner conversation. It’s deadly for business decisions.
When you don’t have trend data, stories will try to take its place. They’re engaging, but they’re also selective. They focus on the wins (or the near-wins) and skim over the losses. They leave out the inconvenient facts about deal timelines, conversion rates, or the actual size of the opportunity.
In the worst cases, they inflate the pipeline without inflating revenue. And that’s where optimism turns toxic.
Predictive Revenue is a data-driven framework for forecasting, tracking and improving your company’s ability to generate revenue. It unites marketing, sales, and leadership around a single source of truth, so instead of relying on anecdotes or gut feel, you make decisions based on measurable patterns. By applying a consistent gated sales process and capturing every opportunity in your CRM, you can spot trends earlier, adapt faster, and build clarity over time.
The fundamentals of the Predictive Revenue model remain firm whether you’re in Oslo, Abu Dhabi, or Austin. The nuance (deal value, time in pipeline, deal diversity) will change. But the process shouldn’t.
“Apply the proven gated process first.
Don’t change it until you have the trend data to prove otherwise.”
That process is your only defence against being swept away by compelling narratives.
If the opportunity isn’t in the CRM, tracked against the same criteria you use in mature markets, it’s not an opportunity. It’s just a story.
In a domestic market, stories and data tend to align over time because you’ve been there long enough to call out the gaps.
In a new international market, the time lag between story and truth is longer. It’s easy to burn six, nine, twelve months chasing ghosts because the stories were good and no one challenged them with numbers.
That’s why Predictive Revenue is even more important when you’re expanding internationally. The model forces you to anchor every opportunity, no matter how promising, to the same measurable process you use at home.
It’s your best insurance against over-investing in activity that feels good but delivers little.
Stories inspire, motivate, and give colour to the work we do. But they’re not a substitute for data, especially in a new market where optimism runs high and visibility is low.
Listen to the stories. Then open the CRM and check the numbers.
Because if it’s not in the data, it’s just a story. And stories don’t close deals.