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They cared, but nobody could find a way to get from 11% to 25% and the overall market might have been shrinking. IMO it was the right decision. Does it make se

They cared, but nobody could find a way to get from 11% to 25% and the overall market might have been shrinking. IMO it was the right decision. Does it make sense for a company to continue keeping folks who fail to meet an objective of getting from 11 to 20-25%? Is it fair if other departments are able to pull off similar feats and one department isn't? Seems like layoffs were probably restructuring to keep best of the talent and a last ditch effort to try to get the talent to make it possible. When that failed the company realized the best way to achieve that was to exit the division and double down on the ones that could.

lizknope 3y ago
The situation was far more complex. We sold semiconductor IP blocks. There might be a product that sold for $500K and they might sell 50 licenses a quarter for $25M. For our product our direct competitors sold it for around $4M But at the end of the quarter the division that we were lumped in with would be short of their target by $2M. Then the VP of sales would go through the list of customers we were currently negotiating with and instead of selling for $4M would offer a big discount at half price in order to hit the quarterly revenue target. This went on for 3 years and then they say you need to increase your ROI numbers. Our plan was to not give huge discounts and sell at the same price as our competitors but we got sabotaged by that VP of sales every quarter. After we were at other companies our former customers told us that it was widespread industry knowledge that you could just wait until the last day of the quarter to get huge discounts from us.
bsder 3y ago
> IMO it was the right decision. Does it make sense for a company to continue keeping folks who fail to meet an objective of getting from 11 to 20-25%? Is it fair if other departments are able to pull off similar feats and one department isn't? Yes, because your most heavily optimized cash cows are also your least resilient when the market shifts. A long-term business needs to have a mix of optimized growing cash flow products, legacy cash flow products that are declining, and new cash flow products that don't quite meet the bar yet. Otherwise, as soon as your cash cow gets hit, your business is dead.

lizknope 3y ago

The situation was far more complex. We sold semiconductor IP blocks. There might be a product that sold for $500K and they might sell 50 licenses a quarter for $25M. For our product our direct competitors sold it for around $4M But at the end of the quarter the division that we were lumped in with would be short of their target by $2M. Then the VP of sales would go through the list of customers we were currently negotiating with and instead of selling for $4M would offer a big discount at half price in order to hit the quarterly revenue target. This went on for 3 years and then they say you need to increase your ROI numbers. Our plan was to not give huge discounts and sell at the same price as our competitors but we got sabotaged by that VP of sales every quarter. After we were at other companies our former customers told us that it was widespread industry knowledge that you could just wait until the last day of the quarter to get huge discounts from us.

bsder 3y ago

> IMO it was the right decision. Does it make sense for a company to continue keeping folks who fail to meet an objective of getting from 11 to 20-25%? Is it fair if other departments are able to pull off similar feats and one department isn't? Yes, because your most heavily optimized cash cows are also your least resilient when the market shifts. A long-term business needs to have a mix of optimized growing cash flow products, legacy cash flow products that are declining, and new cash flow products that don't quite meet the bar yet. Otherwise, as soon as your cash cow gets hit, your business is dead.