Best Advice: Never Be a Hero on Budget Day
Gijsbertus J.J. van Wulfen
Innovation keynote speaker, Number One Thought Leader Design Thinking 2024, LinkedIn Top Voice helping you and your organisation, to become amazing innovators with keynotes, workshops, and a proven innovation method.
My first job was marketing dried soups for Honig, the Dutch market leader. We sold more than 50 million consumer packets in the Netherlands per year. Not a bad figure, considering the country’s population is only 16 million. Our market share was more than 60 percent. There was just one problem; the dried soups market had stopped growing.
As the "new kid on the block", I was also responsible for setting the sales volume targets for the soups products for the next year together with the sales manager. We had to make a joint target proposal to the commercial director of our company. As a young marketer I was really ambitious. I suggested to the sales manager an increase in volume of at least three percent the coming year. This was quite ambitious in a stable market, having already a market share of 60 percent. Frank, the sales manager, had a big smile on his face when I made my 3-percent suggestion. He was an "old fox". He had seen it all, and done it all.
"Gijs, listen", he said. "If you commit yourself to a rise in sales of 3 percent, and after a couple of months you only realize 2 percent, your boss will be bothering you continuously the rest of the year because you are lagging behind. If you commit yourself to a 1 percent rise in sales, and after a couple of months you realize 2 percent, your boss will be full of cheers, saying you are doing a wonderful job this year. Never be a hero on budget day."
This advice stayed very important to me in my working life. It did not lower my ambition level – on the contrary. It gave me the insight that 'under-promise' and 'over-deliver' is a great strategy to satisfy the needs of both your bosses or clients and yourself.
That year, together with a lot of colleagues, Frank and I realized 2.5% growth in sales volume and got a lot of compliments from our commercial director. It was a wonderful (learning) year.
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Gijs van Wulfen is a LinkedIn thought leader on innovation. He is the founder of the FORTH innovation method. He just published a wonderful new book : "The Innovation Expedition, A Visual Toolkit to Start Innovation". Look inside & order at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.
Photo credits: Kenteegardin/Flickr
Executive Director and Senior Lobbyist at American Lobbying Company
10yYou are a hero if you have earned it and it can never be taken away.
Finance and Operational Excellence Consultant (PMP® - FMVA® - LSSBB®)
10yIts a Budgetary slack... And actually budegt needs heros, visioners. And i think your company have a lack of budget depicting techniques .. Wrong advice and unefficient one.
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Senior Consultant at FK enterprise Sales Trainer,Coach, Motivator and Mentor
10yI agree with Gijs. My personal philosophy is that if you put 2to 3 spoonful of sugar in a cup of tea the tea gets very sweat and if you want to reduce the sugar it is impossible. on the other hand if you put half a tea spoon of sugar and it is not sweet enough than you have the liberty to increase it to 1 or more as per your liking. the gist is start with a smaller budget and you can always increase it as per the market trends.
Product Lead- Global Benefits and Retirement Products @Rippling | Previously CPO at Cipio & CEO/Co-Founder of Kyndoo | 500 Global Batch 26 | Full-Stack Web Developer | Pre-seed Angel Investor and Mentor/Advisor.
10yGreat points in this article. Being realistic is not the same as being lazy. By setting a target you can commit to, you are better able to lead your team to the goal.