It's Still the Wild, Wild West for Technology Sales Vice Presidents

For Vice Presidents of Sales in technology firms, the pressure to hit revenue targets has never been greater. With reduced sales staff, and the demand to accurately forecast revenues quarterly, monthly (or even weekly), the top sales executive must feel like the lone sheriff in a final shoot-out with Billy the Kid. But the calvary can come to their aid - if the Vice President adopts process-based sales methodology and implements these best practices with his/her sales managers throughout the sales team.

How wild is the sales frontier? A recently released 2002 survey of technology Sales Vice Presidents shows continued and increased pressure placed on the "Chief Revenue Officer." The average tenure of the Sales Vice President was only 12 months - down from an18 month average in the prior year's survey results. No Vice President surveyed had been in his/her position longer than 3 years - down from 4 years in the prior survey. On average, revenue targets and prices had decreased slightly, by an average of 7%. But this decrease comes off of a whopping 94% average increase in quota targets in the prior year.

Forecasting and meeting revenue targets will continue to be the most important job for even the roughest, toughest senior sales executive. Forecasting revenue targets and communicating revenue expectations (especially revenue shortfall!) is too important a task for the Sales Vice President to delegate down to the individual sales rep - particularly if that Vice President of Sales wishes to beat that 12-month average tenure.

In fact, rolling up sales reps' forecasts is like a high-stakes card game in Dodge City. Here are the high-stakes players and their forecasting styles:

"Close-to-the-Vest" Chester - Chester plays his cards very, very close. He wants no one (especially his Sales VP) to know what Aces or Deuces he's holding, whether these are terrific revenue opportunities or unqualified tire-kickers. Chester will never willingly update a pipeline report, and is very unlikely to invite any support staff or senior sales manager on a key call. Chester mistakenly thinks that sharing his cards with his Sales Manager will put more pressure on him to actually win a hand.

"The Joker's Wild" Jesse - Jesse plays each card as though it were a take-the-pot winner - even if he's holding a hand of losers. Poor Jesse forecasts even unreturned voice-mail messages at 50% of closure. Jesse's outrageously optimistic sales forecasts grossly pad the Sales VP's overall rolled-up revenue number, resulting in missed revenue targets and mistakenly set expectations. As Jesse's wild-eyed guesses on closure dates for unqualified deals continue to slip, the unfortunate Sales Vice President struggles to explain a dramatically lengthening sales cycle to the Board.

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