Why you need to start planning now
Because just relying on your CFOs go-ahead will put you in a bad spot
If you’re a revenue leader or RevOps and you are leaving planning for next year to your CFO to worry about, you might be making a mistake.
The reality is that the later your planning starts, you experience:
Fewer iterations you and the team can run through and discuss
More fat-finger mistakes trying to crunch data in time
And less time to push back against the top-down numbers
By waiting until you get the go-ahead from your CFO, what’s actually happening is that you’re just a passenger in the process.
And if you and your CFO disagree on chosen targets and budgets?
Well, too bad.
“Didn't we hire you for exactly this reason? Figuring tough things out?”
Sounds familiar?
I’ve experienced enough of this as a CRO, so I know the pain firsthand.
And the best way to fix that?
Instead of waiting to be included in planning, CROs and RevOps should start pushing their CFO to get going.
You only need to know 2 things
So what if they’re not ready to start planning yet?
That’s completely fine.
There are plenty of reasons why Finance might be reluctant to do it now.
But that shouldn’t stop you from starting early, because you don’t need the whole budget.
You just need to know 2 rough numbers.
ARR target by the end of next year.
And, what CAC Payback do you expect me to hit.
From that you can figure out:
Expected ARR Growth next year
CAC budget for next year (COGS budget usually stays as is)
Rough headcount estimate for next year
I go a bit deeper on how to figure this out here in my Podcast
Finance-Led, Revenue-Triggered
With as much I like to poke fun at Finance at times, I don’t want you readers to think that I’m advising you to go around the CFO and plan on your own.
Finance still has an important role in this, and planning in most cases will remain finance-led.
But by asking to start the process early, it becomes revenue-triggered.
And if the numbers aren’t final?
Then, at least you have a jumping-off point, instead of starting it from scratch a couple of months from now.
If you have started planning (or are about to), we’ve built some tools within Growblocks with you in mind. I would love it if you could check it out and tell me what you think.