The shipping forecast
Long sales cycles suck.

Small course corrections in a timely manner can have a big impact
I think we can all agree on that.
First of all, they suck in themselves as they are long drawn out and reaction times are slow and ponderous so it is next to impossible to qualify out without having invested more time than you wish you had. In hindsight. Even when you are militant about qualification, it still takes longer than you want it to.
Also, they suck more holistically as long sales cycles tend to go hand in hand with low conversion rates. Enterprise sales tend to be high value, yes, but you will have to work on a deal for a year… probably two… occasionally even longer… and across all the deals you work on, your conversion is unlikely to be more than 20%.
So you are mostly losing.
And I personally hate losing. I hate it more than I like winning. I don’t think I am alone in this.
And there’s more.
Long sales cycles suck for another reason. Yes, of course you need patience and perseverance and all the traits I personally do not naturally possess.
You need the ability to spend time, money and energy and invest creativity, talent and… did I mention time… into an effort that will offer you nothing by way of feedback or proof points for a very long time or very erratically. But they also suck for one more reason, one last reason.
In a long sales cycle, there are plenty of places for the unhelpful or the untalented to hide during the first year, during the first half of the cycle. Where everyone expects proof points to be scarce. Where everyone expects little to be happening. Where inactivity, ineffectiveness and ‘the nature of the beast’ can be easily confused for each other.
There are plenty of places for the lazy and the ineffective to hide during the first half of the sales cycle.
Where it is hard for the uninitiated to discern whether someone hasn’t closed a deal because they don’t know what they’re doing… because they’re not doing much… or because the sales cycle is long and this is what happens.
And the reason this sucks is that this is the time when you can and should course-correct. This part of the cycle is the time when small adjustments can make a huge difference. Adjustments that won’t be visible to the inattentive. And they will not be carried out by those intent on hiding. But they’re necessary adjustments nonetheless.
A small nudge. At the right time. Can totally change your course.
A bit like boating.
Have you ever tried to adjust the course of a boat? Take it from me… it’s not like driving a car. Not in the slightest. A gentle nudge translates to a great big divergence. You need to be gentle. Intentional.
And timely.
If you decide to take a sharp turn at speed, you will capsize. So you need to make your move early, with intent.
I don’t want to drag this analogy too far, especially because I am not that savvy a sailor and we are dangerously close to the limits of my knowledge about boats. Not about bad sales practice.
Because here’s the rub.
Salespeople may be bad at selling your product, but they are almost always excellent at selling themselves. Some sales folks might be able to get away with using swagger for the first half of their sales cycle and the first year of their tenure. Reassurance and obfuscation and a lot of confidence. And then as you enter the second half of the sales cycle… panic and recrimination and excuses.
And the question we should be asking is: Why didn’t they make the course corrections necessary when they had the time?
So glad you asked.
Usually, it’s one of three reasons:
1) What seemed like a sales strategy challenge on the outside turned out to be a whole different kettle of fish from the inside. The course corrections needed aren’t small and the rest of the organisation doesn’t want to have a conversation about product market fit, product pricing fit or delivery discipline. They prefer to think of it all as a sales problem, thank you very much. But it’s not a sales problem and the salesperson can’t fix it for you. Not even the best salesperson can fix that for you on their own.
2) The salesperson has no idea what they are doing so they have no idea how to course-correct and the board or chief exec they are reporting into have no idea what to look for and so the blind lead the blind into a wall. So, they don’t because they can’t.
3) The salesperson did make the right changes. They are subtle, but they were the right ones. And yet the course correction didn’t work out. Or it worked but the sale fell through all the same. It happens.
Now, the million-dollar question is how do you tell those apart? Especially if you are the board or chief exec.
This may be the right time to explain the title of the piece… because of course the nautical theme is obvious enough (small course corrections in a timely manner = big impact), but if you don’t live in the UK the magic of the shipping forecast may be lost on you. So, for the uninitiated… the shipping forecast is a BBC radio weather report. Literally. That is all it is.
It is broadcast by BBC Radio 4 on behalf of the Maritime and Coastguard agency several times per day, every day over the past 150 years.
Pretty neat, no?
The shipping forecast has a very set approach to life. The waters around the British Isles are divided into 31 ‘weather areas’ and the forecast lists areas with gale warnings. Then they give a general synopsis of pressure areas. Then a forecast for each individual area covering wind speed, direction, rain, visibility. All the stuff you’d want to know as a sailor, especially 150 years ago when your own equipment may be basic to say the least.
There is a pattern, repeatability and discipline to the shipping forecast.
There is also a very specific presentation style that can only be described as story time for the perennially technical. It has a very soothing, rhythmic cadence and people listen to it with no intention of ever setting foot on a boat. It has a cult following. Don’t ask me, I don’t know. I have lived in this country long enough to know some of these things happen, not long enough to understand them.
The point is, whether you love listening to the shipping forecast or not, it is always there. Even when there is no news. It always follows the same format. It never skips any of the weather areas or key events. In fact, it starts with the key events but then methodically goes through everything including the most minute changes. And it never skips anything. Because everything matters.
Do you see where I am going with this?
The only way to give people no place to hide during the early stage of a long sales cycle… is also the only way to ensure you are making the right course corrections… and not missing salient facts… and learning from the process… and educating your stakeholders.
The only way to ensure that you do the right things is rigour, discipline and a lot of information.
But boards want to see success. Executive teams want to see movement. And they want to see movement to suit the cadence of their executive reporting, not the sales cycle. They want to see success timed to suit the next board meeting date and runway pressures, not the needs of the deal.
Even though we all know that the cycle is long, movement is correspondingly slow and deliberate and conversion rates mean we are mostly losing… even though, counter-intuitively, the way we ask for sales activity to be reported creates the very interference that allows people to hide for an impossibly long time… we still do it.
Even though we should all know by now that, by the time the window closes, that window of opportunity to course correct… we still do it.
Even though we know, we absolutely know because we’ve seen it happen time and again, that by the time that window closes there is no place to hide any more. Nor is there time to change course any more. Not even by degrees.
There is no longer any room to manoeuvre and no more time to say I told you so.
#LedaWrites
Leda Glyptis is FinTech Futures’ resident thought provocateur – she leads, writes on, lives and breathes transformation and digital disruption.
She is a recovering banker, lapsed academic and long-term resident of the banking ecosystem.
Leda is also a published author – her first book, Bankers Like Us: Dispatches from an Industry in Transition, is available to order here.
All opinions are her own. You can’t have them – but you are welcome to debate and comment!
Follow Leda on X @LedaGlyptis and LinkedIn.