A few weeks ago, I was sitting at the table with the management team of a company preparing its plans for 2027.
The latest forecast was projected on the wall. The original budget stood next to the expected result. The gap between them was impossible to miss.
Katrin pointed at the revenue line.
“If we are honest, we are not going to close this gap before the end of the year.”
Carl explained what had happened. Customer decisions had been postponed, a major project had started later than expected and two commercial vacancies had remained open for too long.
Johan was more optimistic. The opportunities were still there. The market was large enough. Next year should be better.
Then the conversation moved to 2027.
Revenue was increased by a percentage. Costs were adjusted. Sales received a higher target. A few new customers and efficiency gains were added.
Within an hour, the spreadsheet balanced again.
I asked them:
“What will you actually do differently next year?”
It became quiet.
The numbers had changed, but the organisation behind them had not. The same managers would lead the same teams. The same salespeople would approach many of the same customers. The same processes and habits would determine what happened every day.
So why would this organisation suddenly produce a different result?
The budget is not missed in December
A disappointing result is rarely just a financial problem. The financial result is simply where all the smaller organisational problems eventually become visible.
Perhaps salespeople spent too much time on customers with little potential. Perhaps prices were based on history rather than value. Perhaps nobody really owned the customer journey from first contact to delivery and aftercare.
Maybe Sales blamed Operations for delays, while Operations complained that Sales made promises nobody could fulfil.
Managers reviewed the results every month, but avoided the more difficult conversations about priorities, cooperation and behaviour.
The budget is not missed in December. It was missed in hundreds of decisions, avoided conversations and repeated routines throughout the year.
If those routines remain unchanged, the 2027 budget is little more than the 2026 disappointment presented in a cleaner spreadsheet.
From financial gap to transformation gap
A forecast tells you where the current organisation is likely to end up. It does not tell you how to create a different result.
Suppose the forecast points toward €12 million in revenue and the ambition for 2027 is €15 million. That €3 million difference is not simply a target to be divided among salespeople.
It is a transformation gap.
Of course, you need to decide how much growth should come from pricing, new customers, cross-selling, retention or greater efficiency. But you also need to ask what people will do differently.
A pricing target requires salespeople who can defend value. Cross-selling requires people to look beyond their own product or department. Customer retention requires someone to take ownership of the complete customer experience. Higher productivity requires managers who are willing to challenge routines that no longer work.
Without that conversation, the budget is still only a collection of assumptions.
We recently supported a technically driven service company facing exactly this challenge. It had strong expertise, committed professionals and an ambitious growth target, but its commercial and operating model had not been built for the next stage.
Customer contact was largely relationship-driven. There was no systematic segmentation or coverage model. Pricing varied significantly, responsibilities between Commercial and Operations were unclear and the organisation had never mapped the complete customer journey.
We did not start by asking how to increase the numbers.
“Which customers do you want to grow with, what do those customers value and where do they experience friction?”
That led to a different commercial approach. The customer base was segmented, contact strategies were sharpened, cross-selling opportunities became visible and pricing became a deliberate management choice.
Internally, responsibilities were clarified and important customer touchpoints were connected to processes, roles and owners.
Then came the more difficult part. Did people have the skills required by the new roles? Could managers lead the change? Which familiar behaviours were helping the company, and which were quietly holding it back?
The financial plan, the customer strategy and the people could no longer be discussed separately. Together, they became the plan.
Back at the table
When I returned to my original question, the conversation with Katrin, Carl and Johan changed.
They stopped discussing percentages and started discussing choices.
Which customers did they really want to grow with? Where were they leaving margin on the table? Which activities produced results and which mainly kept people busy? Where did unclear ownership slow down the customer?
Most importantly, they began discussing their own role. Not only what their teams had to deliver, but what they themselves needed to change in the way they led and worked together.
That was the moment I started to believe in their 2027 budget.
Not when the spreadsheet balanced, but when the people around the table began to see that a different result required something different from them.
So before you approve your 2027 budget, look away from the spreadsheet for a moment.
Look at the people around the table.
What are you going to do differently this time?
