Close the gap

'Close the gap plan' 

When a forecast is submitted and it doesn’t match quota, those words seem to be The Philosopher's Stone. 

No matter if the market is decreasing, you do not have the right offering or both…a close the gap plan is all you need. The problem is that it points in one of following directions: 

• Sales Directors do not trust your sales managers, and think that when they were submitting forecast they were doing a poor job and not considering how to make as much as possible. Options are: 
• Change Sales Managers, if they really do a poor job
• Or…change Sales Directors, as either they do not have leadership skills, but managerial ones, or do not trust their team

• Sales managers, for some reason, are not eager to hit their number
• Most probably, you do not have the right Sales Comp plan in place
• Or quotas are not challenging, but impossible, and sales reps simply don’t care

• Everybody is playing their role in Corporate Bullshit Vaudeville: 
• sales managers know that if they provide a forecast at quota, will be requested to do more, so they do sandbagging. 
• Sales Directors also know that, and request a ‘close the gap plan’, usually to be provided in 24hrs. 
• And then, out of the blue, a close the gap plan is submitted in 24hrs, and everybody is happy: sales manager were not requested to do more, and sales directors feel they are really smart and are ‘adding value’ 

In any case, the root cause is lack of proper, consistent strategy, tactics and action plans, and hence the whole organization is simply firefighting.