Wednesday, June 24, 2026
Part 7: Tracking Your Past Helps Predict the Future
Do you know how you actually win business? What are your top three lead-generating activities that bring in new gigs? How do people go from seeing you speak to booking you years later, if they weren’t ready to call the moment you shared your brilliance on stage?
For most business owners, it’s tough to predict the future, but if you look at your past first, you can glean critical details that help you forecast more effectively.
Start By Tracking the “Sales Activity” Path
Many speakers track the origin of a lead (e.g., “They saw me at [fill-in-the-blank] conference”) when it comes in, but I encourage you to take your tracking a step further. We also track the Sales Activity that happened between the first meeting and getting a signed contract.
One Path to a New (Big) Client:
- Saw me speak in late 2023. (Saw my expertise)
- Used the live event QR code to get our free downloads. (Instant value)
- I connected with VIPs on LinkedIn after live event. (Stay top of mind)
- Saw various marketing emails and LinkedIn posts for 18 months. (Built trust)
- They attended my free webinar in late 2025. (Heard a client success story)
- Called in early 2026 to book a speaking and training bundle. (win-win)
When you track this path, you realize that your blast emails and “free” webinars aren’t just extra work—they are the mid-funnel activities that nurture a lead into becoming a client.
Tracking New Metrics
Once you know your client origins and sales activities leading to new business, you can then more accurately predict the future by looking at certain new metrics. By setting up a simple scorecard or dashboard of “leading” metrics (see my earlier blog post) and keeping track of historical and lagging metrics from the past, you can take the mystery out of your future. Your revenue stops being a surprise and starts becoming a result of the engine you built that drives new business to you and helps close deals faster.
Historical Seasonality
Another valuable data set is historical seasonality – especially in the speaking business. My team does a lot of association work and we track both when the meeting planners go into speaker selection mode and when they finally sign our contracts. Over time, this has led to us knowing exactly when to send our latest videos and topics for consideration at the right time, as well as how likely we are to close business next month or next quarter because we know who’s booking when and how often we get selected (a.k.a. our win rate).
If you’re not already, consider spending just a few hours gathering your past data into a “historical seasonality” spreadsheet, so you can create a stronger outreach plan for the next 6-12 months. Because we run a cash-based accounting system rather than an accrual system, we track both new business closed and how much cash was received each month, from deposits and final payments, to see our history over time. Here’s a simple table to get you started. Put several years next to one another to find seasonality from your past.
| Year |
| Cash Rcvd | New Biz Closed |
Jan | | |
Feb | | |
Mar | | |
Apr | | |
May | | |
Jun | | |
Jul | | |
Aug | | |
Sep | | |
Oct | | |
Nov | | |
Dec | | |
TOTAL | $0 | $0 |
Forecasting by Service Line
When you’re ready to look ahead, don’t just set a random revenue goal. Create a Service Line Forecast, based on what you’ve sold in the past – line by line. Instead of saying, “I want to make $200k,” break it down into buckets. Here’s a sample using generic numbers for various speaking fee levels, if you don’t have various service lines like speaking, training, coaching, consulting, and products:
Service Line | Last Year | New Goal | New Revenue |
High Fee Gigs | 4 at $8,000 | 5 at $10,000 | $50,000 |
Standard Gigs | 14 at $6,500 | 12 at $6,500 | $78,000 |
Virtual Dates | 5 at $4,000 | 7 at $4,500 | $31,500 |
Quarterly Post-Event Call Pkg | 2 at $10,000 | 4 at $10,000 | $40,000 |
| | | $199,500.00 |
When you see the numbers this way, you can sense whether your goal is realistic. If you want to increase your revenue by $50k, you can plan out exactly how many “Whales,” “Sharks,” or “Fish” (what we call our large, medium, and small contracts) you need to add to the calendar to get there.
Think Like a CEO
Moving from a freelance speaker to running a speaking business means understanding your business engine and all its parts. You can certainly outsource the details once you have your tracking tools in place, but business owners should maintain a close view of the numbers that matter at all times!
Read the 7-Part Series:
Cara Silletto, MBA, CSP, has been a speaker/trainer focused on workforce retention for nearly 14 years. She loves using her unique mechanical mindset to help speakers create a well-oiled operations machine and find a foolproof flow that allows them to be successful and still spend nights and weekends with their family and friends instead of their laptops!