Is it fair to roll over a missed budget to next month?

Is It Fair to Roll Over a Missed Budget to the Next Month?

When you miss budget, the pressure doesn’t disappear—it compounds.

In today’s Question of the Day, I break down why simply “rolling it over” isn’t as simple as it sounds, and what it really means for your team and your targets.

I compare it to a football game: it doesn’t matter how well you win a quarter—what matters is being ahead at the end. I even reference the 1993 Buffalo Bills comeback over the Houston Oilers to highlight what it takes to respond when you’re behind.

In this episode, we cover:

• The real stakes of missing budget
• Why rolling over a deficit changes the game
• How to think about performance beyond short-term wins
• The importance of having a clear sales plan and individual goals to avoid falling behind in the first place

If you’re dealing with budget pressure—or want to prevent it—this episode will help you approach it with clarity, structure, and intention.

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 Indiana. And Brian asks, We have missed budget in both January and February. It keeps rolling into the next month. This seems unfair because it keeps making each month harder. At some point, it becomes realistic. Is this fair to keep rolling the missed budget over each month? That's a great question. Good question. And I I can empathize with that. I mean, that that stinks. It's like I just failed, and my reward for failing is it just got even harder. It's like being on a bench press, right? And I can't, I can't even do the rep with what's there. So let's add some more weight on, right? Or Jim Gaffigan has a good skit about if you ever wondered what parenting is like, he says, imagine you're in the water and you're drowning, and then somebody hands you a baby. It's like you're already drowning, life's already tough. And then here, have a baby on top of it. That's a lot what parenting is like, actually. So this is a great question, and I can empathize with it. But think about think about the stakes here. Think about what's actually happening. And I'm going to use a uh football as an analogy here. In fact, one specific uh football game. I remember when I was I was 10 years old and uh the playoffs happened, and I took I took the playoffs very seriously. So, like I did this thing in my house where when we got to the playoffs, I would draw all the helmets and and the logos on the helmets and color them in, and I would basically create like a bracket on our railing, uh, on our stairs in our house, and and each week I would move the bracket and eliminate the teams and whatnot, right? And so I really paid attention to um the the NFL playoffs. And there was this one particular NFL playoff game that it was the Buffalo Bills versus the Houston Oilers. And we, I don't remember what we did that morning, but we did something as a family, and then we were out at the mall, and uh, you know, this is before phones, so you don't have updates and whatnot. But I remember walking past Radio Shack, and Radio Shack had all the TV set up and you could see the games, and I remember seeing that the Houston Oilers were up 35 to 3 on the Buffalo Bills, and on top of that, Jim Kelly, star quarterback, Jim Kelly for the Buffalo Bills, was out. He was injured, and so they had something called Frank Reich in at quarterback. I never heard of Frank Reich, I didn't I didn't know who that was. All I knew it was the backup, and so even my 10-year-old brain at the time, 35-3, you got the backup quarterback in. My 10-year-old brain even knew, yep, that one's over. And then we went on our shopping at the mall there, right? Now, funny thing was, when we got home, I was shocked to see the Buffalo Bills actually came back. They won that game 41 to 38. In fact, now it's called it's it's a game that has actually two names. Uh, it's called the comeback, or it's also called the choke. Kind of depending on how you want to angle that, I guess. The comeback or the choke. So it wasn't over. The game wasn't over, and that's exactly what what your budget is like. So think about your budget. Your budget, it's built on growth. When you're hitting budget, you're winning the game. The Bills, they couldn't, they couldn't put together a quarter. They're they're down 35 to 3. Even if they scored 21 points in a quarter and now it's 35-24, they're still not winning the game. They had an awesome quarter by definition. You scored a lot of points in that quarter, but you're still not winning the game. And so winning the game is relative to the score. Same thing with our budget. When we set that budget, we set it on growth and what the company needs to achieve its goals. And so falling short of that, we're losing the game. And so that doesn't change the score to win the game. That has to roll over quarter to quarter or month to month in this case. Because that budget, that budget, decisions are made on that budget. When we set that budget, decisions are made. Money is spent to achieve that budget. Money is spent to get a return on investment to achieve that budget. Positions are hired. We're taking risks and hiring positions to grow. What if those positions don't pan out? That's a common question I get is Chris, how do I know when to hire another salesperson? Because that's scary. What if I hire a salesperson and then we don't have the leads? What if I, Chris, when do I hire a sales manager? What if we hire a sales manager and performance doesn't increase? They don't pay for themselves. There's a lot of risk there. And so you're spending money, you're you're hiring positions, you're buying trucks, you're buying tools, you're you're investing in that budget, money spent. We gotta win the game for that to pay off because budget is the score. It doesn't matter what we do quarter to quarter, that just continues to roll over. The Buffalo Bills found themselves behind 35 to 3. They needed to score a bunch of points to get ahead of 35. That's where they had to get to. You have to be ahead at the end. So, yeah, yes, I the answer, yes, it's fair to roll that over because we're we're not winning. Because in reality, think about what happens. What happens at the end of the year if we don't hit that budget? All that growth is gone. All that, all, all, all of the investments we made up for it, that's all gone. Jobs are gonna be eliminated, growth is gonna be postponed, companies are gonna downsize, we're gonna lose out on future opportunities, we're gonna nix training. And that one always flabbergassed me because here we're already losing, and and now we're deciding to eliminate an opportunity to get better, right? Like I get it, like that costs money, that's how we get better, that's how we get out of this hole, right? But these are the things that get eliminated because we just can't afford them. Okay, the budget, we're not hitting the budget, and so we can't afford these things. And so I'm not trying to sound like a doomsday, but some something, the money's gonna come from somewhere. So, whatever that is, the money, money's coming from somewhere to rectify that budget shortcoming. So it's easier to recapture this early. Now you're in a nice position because January, February, we're into the third month here. Okay, so we're only a couple of months in. This would be much worse if we're missing month after month after month, and it's like October. Um, but we can raise the red alert early. I have one company that I'm working with, and actually they hit budget January and February, but they're still raising the red alert because they're looking at the numbers within the numbers, and they're saying, yeah, we hit budget, but when you really break it down, sales was outperforming. Sales was performing better than expected, and leads were actually really short. Now, we can't expect that to happen month after month after month. So they're raising the red alert already that tough months are coming because sales isn't gonna bail them out every month. And it happens vice versa as well. I see companies that sales is actually underperforming, but then they don't worry about it because they had tons of leads. And so they hit budget just by getting all those leads. And so we have we have to be looking within the budget as well, but raise that red alert early. It's a lot like, it's a lot like if you're driving in a ditch, right? And I I had the uh misfortune of when I was 16, I drove a car right into the ditch. I drove my 1982 Honda Accord right into the ditch because I was goofing around and driving way too fast on a country road. And but when you when you start going in the ditch, the best time to avoid the ditch is when you start drifting towards the ditch, catch it early. Because in my case, my front tire started going down into the ditch, and once you're down into the ditch, even if you pull back, you're just gonna roll the car into the ditch, right? And so once you're in the ditch, you're in the ditch. Yeah, at some point you're not getting out. And so the best time is to sound it, sound the alarm early and get back out of the ditch before you get too far into the ditch. Now, the other thing to factor into that is seasonality. Seasonality may play into that as well, and I'm not saying like chalk this up as an excuse and oh, it's just seasonality, we're fine. Like, no, raise raise the red alert, but sometimes seasonality plays a factor in this, right? And so here's an example would be like if we have an early warm-up. Last year in the Midwest, we had an early warm-up, and so companies in May, it we were getting summer weather already, and that doesn't normally happen way up north. Um, but because of that, customers were flipping on their HVAC systems, they weren't working, and HVAC companies were really busy, and so the May budget looked amazing. They crushed the May budget because they were planning for all that warm-up in June, so it came early. So we crushed May, but then we missed June. Did miss June, right? And it it happens in reverse as well. If there's a late warm-up, if you were planning for the warm-up in May or June, you may miss May or June because the warm-up happens more in June, July. And so you may miss to recapture it when that warm-up happens. Happens the same in the cooling seasons as well. So seasonality may have something to do with that, but that's I wouldn't count on that as my saving grace because I don't have any control over the seasonality. It might never warm up. And so I I need to take action now. So here's what I would do. I would I would plan to avoid this altogether. And what I mean by that is I would have a detailed sales plan, something that I am working off of. So you have, as a company, you have your budget. That's that's what we need to win the year, right? To to hit the growth goals that we set up. Now, out of that budget comes a sales plan, because out of the budget, there's a number that sales has to hit. So usually the owner turns to the sales leader and says, This is the number we have to hit. Let's say it's$10 million. We got to hit$10 million this year. And then usually I'm talking to the sales leader and I say, that's great. How are we gonna hit that$10 million? And we say, I don't know, we're gonna try real hard. Well, that's not a really good game plan. If the Buffalo Bills had that game plan, we're gonna throw Frank Reich in and try real hard, they would have lost that game. No, they had a detailed plan of how to be successful, and that's what you need too. You need a detailed sales plan. So that sales plan, and I build these with companies all the time. We can dive in and build this for you. The sales plan, though, is going to define your year and break it down into quarters and break it down into months. It's going to define the calls that you're getting. It's going to define the closing that you're going to execute, the average sale, the growth needed if the numbers don't add up to what we need, if the math ain't mathing. So we're going to define the growth that we need and plan for that growth. How are we going to do it? Are we going to are we going to send our team to this training? Are we going to have this person out to our company? What are we going to do? It's going to define the headcount because then we can plan for the headcount when we need it. And we can even back it up to well, I need to train this person in this amount of time, and it takes this long to hire. So I need to be hiring here, so I have the headcount when I need the headcount. And even lead distribution. How am I distributing the leads to make sure that we're hitting our sales plan? And all of this even funnels down then into individual goals. So your team has individual goals. So you have the company budget, and then you have a detailed sales plan. And part of that detailed sales plan is you have individual goals that make up the sales plan. And these fall like dominoes. So what that allows me to do as a sales leader is focus on the individuals. I can focus on riding along, training, one-on-one, debriefs, winning the day with my team. I can focus on those individuals so that we win each day. And when those individuals are winning and hitting their goals, that domino is going to fall into the sales plan. And the sales plan is going to hit its goal. And that domino is going to fall into the budget. And we're going to hit the sales portion of the budget. What this allows you to do is focus on the individuals and the individual day, inch by inch. Inch by inch, life is a cinch. Yard by yard, life is hard. So when I set things up in that manner, I am now in control of our success. I can pull us out of the ditch before we get into the ditch because I have a good sales plan with individual goals. So that's how I would set it up to be successful. So this doesn't happen. If it does happen, you can get out of the ditch real quick. If you're struggling to set this up, reach out to me. I'd be happy to help you set this up so that you can focus on the individuals, and then it just dominoes into the sales plan and it dominoes into hip. Because there may even be, there may even be scenarios that happen outside of this plan. You put this plan together and you're like, yeah, this is great. We're doing this plan, but now I'm not getting the leads. And it's not me, it's other departments, right? Maybe, maybe marketing isn't driving the leads that we needed, or maybe, maybe we're not booking the calls that we needed, or maybe we're not flipping the calls that we're supposed to flip, right? There, there's a strategy for every one of these. And the strategy isn't to go bust it into another department and say, hey, you guys suck. That's never going to get anything done, right? But it's going to be more of a strategy of how can I help? How can we work together as a team? How can I help? Jonathan Wisman has a great book called The Sales Boss. And in the sales boss, at the very beginning, he talks about successful CEOs of large companies. And they have one thing in common. They all were in a sales leadership role sometime earlier in their career because as a sales leader, you sometimes have to manage outside of your department. I have to help manage the things that are coming towards my department. And if I can be successful at that, that's what makes up a good CEO. A good CEO has a lot of moving pieces and they got to keep them all flowing together, right? That's that skill of how do I work with other departments to achieve their goals so that I can achieve my goal. So that may be part of that sales plan as well. But I mean, you're right. At some point, at some point it may become unrealistic, right? And the team may be looking at me month after month as this is getting wider and wider. And they're saying, like, we can't do that. Like that would take the best performance ever. Like it just it just can't be done, right? The math doesn't work out. And at that point, you would have to reset. You would have to reset and make it achievable. And I I had this with a company I worked with. Uh so I worked with this owner and sales leader, and we built a sales plan. And each month we missed. And it wasn't it wasn't by great amounts, but we missed a little bit in January, a little bit in February, and then March. Every single month, we just missed a little bit. And this gap started to get wider and wider. Now, early on in the year, March, April, May, yeah, it looked like we could write the ship, but we didn't. We didn't write the ship, and it just kept getting wider and wider. And so by by the time October rolled around, yeah, it's unachievable. Like it's pretty obvious we're not going to hit the budget. We could have a world-class October, November, December, and we're still not gonna win the game here. And so at that point, I said, let's reset. What can we achieve by the end of the year? And we reset the budget for those last three months. We knew we weren't gonna hit, but at least we made it achievable, something we could keep chasing after rather than giving up. Now it's March, you're not there yet, right? So you're not gonna give up, you're not gonna reset. You can still climb out of this. In fact, you can still, if you don't have a sales plan, build that sales plan with the individual goals, those individual goals that equal your sales plan. You can still build that, and we can even factor in what you missed in January and February. We can still write this ship. We just got to have the sales plan to do it. So that's today's question of the day. If you're enjoying question of the day, follow, share, and give a rating. Question of the day is on major streaming platforms. If you have a question, reach out to me either on social media or email. Both are going to be listed below in the show description. And if you're an X-R member, schedule a call with me. Let's get this addressed one-on-one and get very specific to your situation. Maybe building your sales plan. I'm Coach Chris. We'll see you tomorrow.