We are behind budget - what do we do?

We’re Behind Budget—What Do We Do?

Falling behind budget happens. The real question is how you respond when it does.

In today’s Question of the Day, I walk through practical strategies you can use right now to create momentum and close the gap. But we don’t stop there—we also look at what needs to change so you’re not having the same conversation again next quarter.

In this episode, we cover:

• Immediate actions sales leaders and teams can take to regain traction
• Where to look first when performance starts slipping
• Long-term adjustments that help prevent future budget shortfalls
• Why strong sales processes ensure that when a company misses budget, sales isn’t the reason the ship sinks

I can’t guarantee you’ll never miss budget again. But with the right focus and execution, you can make sure your sales team is part of the solution—not the problem.

Have a Question? - Submit your questions to chrish@nexstarnetwork.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Welcome to the question of the day. Today's question is from Brian in Wisconsin. And Brian asks, We are two months into the year and already behind our budget. We were off a bit on the first month and even more on the second month. We're starting to dig a hole that I fear we won't be able to get out of. What can we do to hit budget? That's a great question. Man, that stinks. Like someone take a minute and like just acknowledge that. That stinks. You're all amped up for the new year, new budget, all these things we're gonna do this year. And then before we know it, we're two months into the year and we tripped coming out of the starting blocks. And so now we got a lot of ground to make up. The year's barely begun, and we're already chasing behind it. That makes for a really long year. And so, man, I just I just want to acknowledge that stinks. So this this honestly is a much bigger topic than to probably address in this forum here. I think honestly, we should schedule a call and dive deeper into it. This would be something that we really want to ask questions and get deeper and look at your budget and look at performance and and find the opportunities. But I'll I'll hit some pieces, some big pieces on this, and then speak to it from a sales perspective. I think first I'm gonna talk about what do we do from here? What do we what do we do right now in the situation we're in? But then I want to speak to what do we do in the future to not let this happen again? Because one of the one of the things I think I'm really good at, I don't always do things right the first time, but I'm really good at doing it the second time because I have I have a long-term memory for that pain, right? Like if I look like an idiot standing in front of a group or or I miss budget because of X, Y, Z. Like I usually don't make the same mistake twice. And so this hurts right now. Let's talk about what we are gonna do so that it doesn't happen again. So we'll start from now, but then we'll talk about future, like, how do we not let this happen again? So I guess now, first I would wanna identify why we are missing a budget. So, like a doctor, right? Like if you went to the doctor and you were sick, the doctor's gonna start asking all these questions and doing all these tests, and they're gonna start very broad, and then they're gonna start focusing in on things. And so that's what I'd want to do here. I want to start diagnosing like, why are we missing the budget? Because here we created this budget, we created this plan, and now we've shifted into executing the plan, and we're not for some reason. We're not executing the plan. So I want to identify what went wrong. Is it is it that we set up a bad plan? That could happen. Maybe we got overzealous and and just started throwing out numbers, or our numbers weren't based in fact. And so maybe we created a plan that was unrealistic from the get-go. Maybe we didn't, though. Maybe it was a realistic plan and now we're just not executing it. So I would start diving into these particular areas. First, I would I would dig into your marketing plan, the plan to drive calls, the plan to make the phone ring. We should have a marketing plan because throughout the year, I'm going to utilize different marketing strategies. There's going to be times of the year, that's our busy season, that I don't need to lean on marketing very much. And then there's going to be slow seasons where I need these marketing strategies. Like in HVAC, that's why you always see free furnace February. Leads are really short in February. The cold snap has passed. Everybody that that needed a system or needed a fix, they already got it by February, but it's not warming up yet. And so we're we're in a slow season here. And so they do the free furnace February to try to make the phone ring, try to get some calls, right? And so with that marketing plan, you can plan for the seasonality, the busy and the slow months. And sometimes these are a little interchangeable. Like I know I'm in the Midwest, and and the last couple of years, the winters have been really mild. And then this last spring, it heated up real quick. Like I think it was April, and companies in the area here were starting to get into their number of calls they normally see in like June and July. So I think April, May, it was really heating up. So sometimes they shift a little bit, but seasonally, we we know what's happening, and we can adjust those marketing plans as we go a little bit. But are we hitting the marketing plan? That's the first spot that I would dive into is are we hitting the marketing plan, making the phone ring? Second thing I would look at is are we booking the calls? So phones ringing, but are we booking those calls? Are we getting enough calls on the board to satisfy our budget, what we said we were gonna get? And then also further from there, are they the type of calls that we want? And this goes back to our marketing plan. I I was just talking with a company today, and they started marketing in a particular area. And one thing they didn't expect is they started getting a lot of landlord tenants. And so their marketing drove more calls, but it was a lot of landlord tenants, which wasn't exactly the calls uh that we wanted to be booking here. And so are we booking the calls, but are we booking them with also the type of calls that we wanted? So that'd be the second place I would look. From there, I would look at are we are we executing? And if it's the case of like HVAC, are we flipping? Are we flipping to a salesperson? So so is the team there in a timely manner? Are they executing the process? Are they building value? Are they making the sale or making the necessary flip in the case of HVAC? And if if they do make the flip, then you'd want to go one layer deeper to that sales team. And and are we closing those calls? So are they there in a timely manner? Are they executing process? Do do they build value? Can they identify and overcome objections? Are they doing um uh a high authority close or raising the bar if the company is shopping around? So are we are we executing proper follow-up? All of these are things I would want to check into. So start by identifying where are we missing? And you may find as you start digging in, we're missing in a lot of areas. Maybe we're not making the phone ring and we're not booking the calls that that we wanted, and we're not flipping the calls, and we're not selling the call. Like we may find we're missing in multiple areas here, but at least now we know the severity of the issue because from there, now I can start putting together a plan to fix it. And I gotta fix it fast because we're two months into the year already. This gap is just gonna get wider and wider as we go through the year. So we're kind of like building the plane and flying it now. Planes already took off, we're in the air, and we've identified an issue that we're trying to fix. So we're building the plane and flying it at the same time. So we got to fix it quick. But I also want to fix it by fixing the root issue. There may be some band-aid solutions I can do to get me by that maybe just treats the symptoms, but I also want to identify what the root issue is and solve it so that it's not a lingering issue. It's not gonna keep biting us as we go down the road here. Uh, a good example of that would be there was a company I worked with recently, and we jumped on a call, and I asked the question, How are we doing two months in on our budget? And he said, We've actually hit budget. We hit January and we hit February. But he was worried because when you really started looking in at the numbers, we were hitting budget, which is great at a surface level. But when you looked at it, sales was exceeding expectations, and they were all they were carrying the load. When you looked at the other departments, the phone was not ringing enough, we were not booking enough calls, and we were not flipping enough calls. But because sales was really stepping up, because they had something like they were expected at 60% closing according to budget, and I forget the average sale, but whatever it was, they were closing at like 75% and a few grand higher on their average sale. So that was enough to offset the shortcomings before that. And and so even though check, check, we hit January and February, this sales manager was looking at the data and seeing this is just a band-aid right now. We're just treating the symptoms, we're not treating the root cause. And so kudos to him that we're gonna dive in and focus on on treating the root cause because sales isn't gonna carry it every month, right? And I don't say that just to talk up sales, like that was just one example. Sometimes, sometimes sales is dragging the team down too. So um, that's just how that one scenario played out. So now let's get more sales specific. Let's get more to what do we do to not let this happen again? So, this is what I commonly see. I commonly see a company sets its budget and then they turn around and they hand a number to the sales leader, and then that sales leader will jump on a call with me and they'll say, like, yeah, I gotta hit 14 million. And I say, Great, how are we gonna hit 14 million? And they say, Oh, try real hard. That's our plan. We're gonna try real hard to hit 14 million. So that tells me we don't have a plan. And if things go sideways, like this scenario, we get two months in and we're missing, we don't have any plan to fix it either. Because we're not we're not operating off of a plan. We need a sales plan. So you need a budget, but you need a specific sales plan to hit that number as well. The sales plan specifically maps out your leads and it weaves in seasonality as well. So in that budget, it says how many calls we should have, right? I can weave that in and I can spread that out based on the seasonality. That gives me an idea how many sales calls we're gonna be running each month. It's not an exact science, but it gets me pretty darn close. This helps me to plan for headcount because if I need to add salespeople, I now know when I'm gonna need to add them so I can back that up. So if I need a if I need another salesperson in May, well, they gotta have time to train and ramp up and get in the field. And I also have to have time to hire this person, and so I gotta I gotta make sure to account for that time. Now the other thing it allows me to do is it allows me to plan for performance as well. So you can currently see how your team is doing in regard to closing and average sale. So if I have those calls and I map it out seasonally, I forecast that, I can apply my closing and my average sale to see is my current performance going to get us to what we need. And if it doesn't, I can start finessing that performance. Well, how much will closing have to go up? How much will average sale have to go up? So basically, I'm doing calls times closing times average sale for each individual month based on the seasonality. I'm forecasting every month to see the performance that we're gonna need. That performance is gonna be my sales plan. This is the team goal. So we have a budget of what we got to hit, but now I have a specific team goal of how we need to perform in terms of closing an average sale. And I can take it even further than that. Now I can make individual goals off of that. So I need to have individual goals for each salesperson. But the kicker is they can't just be the same goal. So I can't take that team goal and be like, hey, everybody needs 60%. Because I have a guy on the team that's gonna be closing at 70%, my top performer. Well, I'm not gonna ask him to go down. I'm not gonna say your goal is 60%. Like, you're not gonna do that. And at the same time, I got a new guy that's closing at 30%. Well, I can't expect him to get up to 60% right away. And so I have to craft individual goals, but collectively, these goals are going to equal what the team budget needs. Now, this creates a very unique and opportunistic situation here. Because if I craft those individual goals to equal the team goals, and that team goal equals the budget, now as a sales leader, I can focus on the individuals rather than spreading myself out and worrying about the company budget and the team goal. Like, all I gotta do is focus on the individuals. And to focus on the individuals, I'm gonna ride along. I'm gonna train, I'm gonna do one-on-ones, I'm gonna do call debriefs, we're gonna define a win the day. And they have they have specific goals. My job is to make them successful. That is exclusively where I'm focusing. Because if I do that, they're gonna hit their goals. And when they hit their goals, we're gonna hit the team goal. And when we hit the team goal, we're gonna be hitting budget. It's a domino effect. They fall just like dominoes, and I don't have to be spread out because I planned accordingly. So you have a budget, you make a team plan, a sales plan, and then you make individual plans customized for each person, but collectively, when everybody hits those, we'll hit the team plan. That allows me to focus on the individuals, and then like Domino's, everybody hits their goal individually, we hit it as a team, we hit budget. Now I can't guarantee that your company will hit budget this way. There's too many outside variables. But I can guarantee if you do it this way, it won't be sales dragging the ship down. So that's today's question of the day. If you're enjoying the question of the day, follow, share, give a rating question of the day is on major streaming platforms. If you have a question, reach out to me on social media or email. Both are going to be listed below in the show description. Let's get your question answered. And if you're an XR member, schedule a call with me. Let's get this addressed one on one and get very specific to your situation. I'm Coach Chris. We'll see you tomorrow.