We Have a Sales Problem
Bill Burton

The meeting described here was real. Identities are obscured to protect lying, incompetent weasels who have attorneys on retainer.

Fade In: The scene is the weekly senior staff meeting in the conference room of Diddly Systems. All the usual suspects are seated around the conference table with their Palm Pilots, laptop computers, cell phones, and note pads at the ready. In the center are two pizza take-out boxes.

Camera tightens on the face of the CEO.

CEO, looking around the table: “So dudes, are we ready for the Board meeting tomorrow?”

Voice of CFO: “Hey dude, pass me a slice of that pepperoni.”

Voice of VP Engineering: “I wanna piece of the veggie.”

Camera cuts to face of VP Marketing.

VP Marketing, in frustration: “Guys lets get focused here. We have a Board meeting tomorrow and we have to decide what we are going to tell them about the delays in development, cost overruns and loss of features.”

Voice of VP Biz Dev: “I’ll take a piece of both. Hey did I tell you dudes that my wife’s fat butt is really pissing me off?”

Voice of CEO: “Dude, I got laid twice this morning.”

Camera cuts to VP Engineering.

VP Eng: “I don’t know what the issue is! We haven’t slipped anything since the last Board meeting, 6 weeks ago.”

VP Sales: “Sure we have. The schedule shows a six-week slip in the date for alpha testing. The cost is 130% of our last estimates and you took out three of the best features.”

VP Eng: “I do not agree with your data.”

VP Sales: “It’s not my data, it’s your data, prepared and distributed by your team!”

VP Eng: “Well, it’s wrong and I don’t know where you got that info. Everything is fine. Right on schedule and right on plan.”

CEO: “That’s excellent, glad to hear it. Did I tell you dudes that I got laid this morning? Twice!”

VP Biz Dev: “That’s because your wife doesn’t have a fat butt.”

Fade Out

Fade In: The scene is the next day’s Board of Directors meeting. The VP of Engineering is at the front of the room with complex charts and graphs projected on the screen behind him.

VP Eng: “So, as you can see by the graphs, we are right on plan. No slips in the schedule and the costs look pretty close to our original estimates”

Venture Capitalist: “I have the charts from the last Board meeting here and it looks to me like there has been a slip of about six weeks since we last met six weeks ago.”

VP Eng: “I don’t know where you got your information.”

VC: “From the charts you presented last meeting and from the chart you have up right now.”

VP Eng: “Oh, that’s an illusion. You see, we have redefined the parameters by which we measure the rate of progress so that as we extrapolate the curve, it becomes tangent to the lateral axis of the alpha prototype plan and thus is convergent with the 3-sigma position of the gradient.”

VC: “Oh, I see. So the fact that the dates do not agree is just a positional anomaly?”

CEO: “That’s right, it is just optics. We are 100% confident that we are on plan.”

VC: “Excellent, I couldn’t be more pleased.”

CEO: “Ok, out next presenter is the VP Sales. He will update us on our sales efforts.”

VP Sales: “Thanks, let me start by….”

VC, Interrupting: “Why don’t we have any sales yet? This is the worst performing sales organization of any of my portfolio companies.”

VP Sales: “Huh? I um...um…um. Sales organization? It’s just me.”

VC: “I know, but we should have orders by now and be looking at some major backlog.”

VP Sales: “With all due respect, we are still a year from the product being ready and we do not yet know what its final features will be or how much it will cost. We are talking to a great many potential customers, but no one is yet ready to commit until they have a little more information.”

VC: “That’s an excuse! All my other companies have orders. And we have just heard how engineering is ahead of the plan. Now sales has to pull its share of the load.”

CEO: “Well, we are not ahead of plan. We are on plan.”

VC: “That’s what I said, you are well ahead of your engineering plan.”

CEO: “Right!”

VP Sales: “Let me continue my presentation. I can show you that we are doing what needs to be done now, to be successful when the product is ready”

VC: “That’s enough. I don’t need to hear any more. This company clearly has a sales problem.”

Second Venture Capitalist: “Why haven’t we hired more sales people?”

VP Sales: “It seems like a waste of money to hire sales people when we don’t yet have a product. I have been trying to keep the cash burn rate under control and contributing much of my budget to engineering so that they can get the product done. As we get closer to product availability we’ll scale the sales team as appropriate.”

VC: “We clearly have a sales problem.”

CEO: “Right, we are spending way too much money on sales.”

VC2: “We should plan to hire more sales people right away. More feet on the street means more orders.”

VP Sales: “It also means more cost!”

VC: “That’s not the issue.”

CEO: “So, what I hear you saying is hire more sales people and reduce sales expenses.”

Venture Capitalists, in unison: “That’s right!”

CEO: “Ok, we’ll report back on that at the next meeting”

CEO: “Lets move on to...”

Fade Out

Fade In: CEO’s office, a half hour after the Board meeting is adjourned. Present are the senior staff debriefing the meeting.

CEO: “Nice job, dudes!”

VP Sales: “I’m sorry but I don’t understand how we have a sales problem. I also don’t know how to hire more sales people and yet reduce sales expenses.”

VP Eng: “Uh huh ya uh huh sure ya.”

CEO: “I am so happy about the development schedule being managed so well.”

VP Eng: “Well, there is one small problem. I didn’t want to bring it up before because I thought it might not look good to the Board but, I think we might be a few days behind on the plan.”

CEO: “What do you mean, ‘a few days?’ “

VP Eng: “I think we might have underestimated the time it takes to integrate the SAM module with the backplane and make the necessary software upgrades to fully exploit the new revision of the Vega chip.”

CEO: “How much time?”

VP Eng: “That’s hard to say, because —”

CEO, interrupting: “It’s hard to say or hard to figure out?”

VP Eng: “I don’t get it. Are you making fun of me?”

CEO: “No, I’m just trying to figure out how, less than an hour ago we were on plan, and now we aren’t.! What happened in the last 30 minutes?”

VP Eng: “This is a very complex product with lots of variable factors that can affect the schedule, so it is really hard to nail down and exact plan.”

VP Sales: “That’s funny because a few minutes ago we had a plan and were ahead of it.”

CEO: “So, if I said we had slipped the schedule 6 weeks in the last 6 weeks would I be approximately correct?”

VP Eng: “Or a few days more. Maybe a month. Or three...”

Fade to Black.