So if you’ve been around startups for a while, and especially sat on any boards, you’ll see a VP of Sales answer a slow Q1 and even Q2 with this:
“We’ll make up for it in Q4.”
And many variations thereof. In fact, in so many sales plans, you often see Q4 bookings at 2x-3x or more Q1! Even when growth overall is slow.
Q1 was supposed to be $1m in bookings, but we only hit $300k? Just add the delta to Q4!
It may look possible on a spreadsheet, but I’ve almost never seen a sales team magically make up for a weak Q1 or 1H with an insane Q4. In fact, maybe never. It just doesn’t work that way.
The other day in fact we looked at a decade of SaaStr Annual ticket selling data. We’ve literally been selling tickets to SaaStr Annual for 500+ weeks, almost every week, for a decade. Phew.
And that gives us a massive dataset across $30,000,000+ of ticket sales and much more.
And one thing is clear, and many counter-intuitive: we — and you– can’t make for a missed campaign, for a missed week, for a missed quarter. It’s just too late.
You would think in our case at least, hey, you forget to send an email campaign 6 months before SaaStr Annual. Surely they’ll still buy a ticket the next month? In the next campaign?
In theory, sure. In practice, No.
We’ve had a few marketers come and go that stubbornly tore up our playbook and didn’t send campaigns for several slots. And we never made up for that lost revenue. At least, not entirely. Never.
Ok is this a perfect analogue for SaaS sales? Not exactly, but maybe.
One thing I can tell you for sure, having been in SaaS since 2005, is if your VP of Sales claims they’ll make up all the lost ground at the start of the year with a massive Q4 … they won’t.
And unfortunately, you’re gonna need a new VP of Sales.
Because if this is what you see, don’t know what to do, and how to reset the plan. So it’s … kind of hopeless.
A related post here:
image from here
