For a figure the company does not hold, a wallet, an estate, a held-away balance, a project value: stated by the customer with a date, a norm from the company's own similar customers, or scaled from a public figure. On the line, always. Stated figures age into estimates past a stated age; estimates rank and size and never produce a claim.
The norm is better than a scaled figure and worse than the customer's statement. It belongs with neither.
Be shown to the customer as their number, appear unlabelled on a board slide, or set a quota or a credit.
Figures the company does not hold, such as a customer's total spend, are labelled by source: stated by the customer in writing, stated verbally, from public data, or estimated from a norm, each with a date.
A customer's category spend is $2.0 million, graded as stated verbally fourteen months ago. It is used for ranking and flagged as stale.
Estimates and stated figures mixed with no label. Nobody can tell which shares to trust.