There isn't.
Not in the sense that the phrase implicitly implies: Something predictable that will make it possible to put together a credible budget.
What we do have is measurability. We can measure our sales effort, but predicting its results is like guessing about soccer. How much is the game going to be? Everybody guesses.
In my 35 years in sales, very rarely have I been able to predict, or even participated in processes where the sales results for the following year were achieved with any accuracy.
When October, November at the latest, arrives, companies start to put together their budgets, and sales revenues are one of the main chapters.
After going through dozens of sales quotes I have learned the following:
1. The budget is a guide. Something that will give a direction. At least it gives a certain psychological comfort to have a map in hand, even if we are the ones who drew it, trying to guess what lies behind that canyon or where that river will flow.
2. To show service and convey a sense of dominance, the commercial areas try to predict details such as the participation of subchannel X in channel Y of segment Z. The budget report becomes very detailed, full of data, tables, and percentages, in addition to in-depth situational analyses.
There is a belief that the more detailed and in-depth the more credible the piece is. In reality, this type of piece is read at most 5% of its content. The decision-makers want to see growth and reduced sales costs, that's all.
I repeat: The function of the play is psychological, psychological comfort. Little or almost nothing of what you put in the report will happen.
I've seen people who, to protect themselves from future blows, put obvious things in the report, like "due to the macroeconomic situation, the pressure for lower prices requires us to make an effort to expand the participation of the less profitable channels, which in fact blah blah blah..."
Feeling for the owner (yes, every company has an owner or even owners): "We are fu... We don't have the slightest condition to survive this year."
3. Even if in the sales budget there are "guarantees" of investments in such and such areas and in the Alpha1 and Beta2 projects, in reality this guarantee falls apart with a simple e-mail from the financial department, advising that "for the time being the investments are suspended". So anything that is "guaranteed" is a mere possibility, tenuous, I would say. Don't count on any of it.
4. The budget piece will serve to "beat" the commercial all year long. It will be the ultimate reason to justify the acts of the top of the organization: It is not meeting the goal, therefore:
- Layoffs, cuts in the area;
- Reduction of "promised" investments or even cancellation;
- Total weakness at the decision table. Commercial is left without any claim strength, after all, it is always owing deliveries of numbers.
5. It is an ineffective and even silly pressure instrument. I explain.
The daily, weekly, and monthly reports will show shortfalls. Once in a while you will manage to deliver your share, but if you add up the accumulation, you, as a businessman, will be in debt.
The backdrop for all interlocutions will be this insufficiency. You spend all your time trying to create defense arguments while suffering serious breakdowns with attacks for your low performance.
While you are justifying yourself, the market is running, the stick is loose on the street, and you are trying to justify yourself internally.
There is an atmosphere of high expectations, low mood, low esteem, and imminent dismissal.
None of this helps the company to compete and increase its chances of survival.
6. Every time I "broke" this implicit code, closing a big deal or even launching some champion product, there was 1% celebration and 99% redo of the parts and charging instruments for new performance.
After all, a commercial needs to "run after something all the time."
What a lot of nonsense, Our Lady of Equivocation.
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Solution? There isn't. Play the game.
If you don't like it or even don't have a strong enough carcass for the corporate melee, get out and seek a position in the public sector.
If your task is commercial, go on the attack: On the street, in the market, with prospects and leads. Bring down the stick. This is what is expected of you.
If you don't pick up the phone and talk to strangers, if you don't approach prospects, if you don't contact as many leads as possible, then my dear man and woman, you are leaving a big check every month on the table of your competitors.
Leave budgets and bureaucratic pieces to the background. Deliver what is asked of you in terms of reports, but put your real focus on the street, on the market. Expand significantly your volume of external contacts.
That is where the money you and your family need is.
Even when I was employed, I quickly understood that it was the customers who paid my salary.
