Your Q1 Revenue Looks Healthy. What Is Your Commercial Organization Missing?
The revenue hockey stick isn't new. What's concerning is how little visibility many firms have into the buying decisions required to deliver it.
I've spent a lot of time with CEOs and commercial leaders reviewing revenue plans. There's a pattern that continues to concern me, particularly in professional services.
The year starts with a reasonable degree of confidence. There's backlog from the previous year. Client projects are underway. Utilization looks healthy. Q1 revenue is generally tracking close to plan, and sometimes that momentum carries into the beginning of Q2.
Meanwhile, the commercial organization is getting its year underway. Sales kickoff, quotas, account plans, new offerings, marketing campaigns, and prospecting priorities.
Everyone is busy. The financial results may look fine.
But there's a question I don't think enough leadership teams are asking.
Are we creating enough of the right opportunities to replace the backlog we're consuming?
And more importantly, are we even seeing the buying decisions that will create those opportunities? That's where I believe the traditional GTM operating model deserves a much harder look.
The Backlog Can Hide a Lot
There's nothing inherently wrong with a revenue plan that accelerates in the second half of the year. Professional services firms have project ramp schedules, contracted work, client budget cycles, and delivery economics that can justify that shape.
What concerns me is how much of the plan depends on new business that hasn't been identified, much less won.
Take a $250 million firm that needs another $25 million in incremental revenue to achieve its annual plan. That $25 million isn't just a bookings target. It has to translate into engagements that can be contracted, staffed, delivered, and recognized within the year.
By the time leadership sees a gap in April or May, the recovery window may already be narrowing.
You can create more pipeline in Q2. That doesn't mean the resulting work will contribute enough revenue in Q3 or Q4 to recover the year. And the opening backlog can make this difficult to recognize early.
The firm is still delivering work sold last year while depending on new buying decisions to support the second half.
The CFO may see the problem in bookings, backlog coverage, and projected utilization before it becomes obvious in reported revenue.
But I would argue the problem often starts somewhere else. It starts with how the commercial organization decides where to look for business.
Who Decided These Were the Right Target Accounts?
This is a question I would encourage every CEO to ask their revenue leaders.
How did we arrive at our target account list?
In some firms, there's a sophisticated segmentation process behind it. In others, it's a combination of industry, revenue size, geography, historical relationships, seller preferences, and accounts leadership has wanted to pursue for years.
The list gets approved. Territories are assigned. Marketing builds campaigns around it. Sellers develop account plans. And the organization gets very disciplined about working that list.
But what happens when the market changes?
A company outside the target list appoints a new CEO with a transformation mandate. Another announces a major capital investment. A private equity firm acquires three businesses that will need to be integrated. A manufacturer begins expanding production capacity. Any of those developments could create demand for professional services.
Not all will.
That's where judgment and business intelligence matter. But if those organizations aren't on the target list, who is evaluating them? In many cases, nobody.
We're investing considerable effort in improving how sellers pursue target accounts without spending enough time challenging whether we've identified the right accounts in the first place.
An account can be a perfect fit for your services and have no reason to buy. Another company you've never targeted may be entering a period of significant investment and change. Which one deserves your attention?
I don't believe target account selection should be a once-a-year exercise. It should be informed continuously by what's changing across the market, where those changes could create demand, and whether the firm has a credible opportunity to help. Otherwise, we can become exceptionally good at pursuing the wrong companies.
We're Missing Buying Decisions Inside Our Own Accounts, Too
The same problem exists within established client relationships.
Professional services firms are generally good at managing important accounts. They have executive sponsors, account plans, delivery reviews, and relationships built over years. But I see a distinction that doesn't receive enough attention. Knowing an account isn't the same as understanding its buying organization.
Consider a firm doing $15 million annually with a major client. The CIO relationship is strong. Delivery is going well. The account team is confident about renewals and expansion.
Then the client hires a new COO. The board has approved a major operating transformation. The COO is working with business unit leaders on restructuring, integration, and performance improvement.
The incumbent professional services firm may have little visibility into those conversations.
Another advisory firm may already be helping define the initiative.
The existing account team hasn't lost a deal. The opportunity may never have entered its pipeline. And that's the issue.
We tend to measure the health of our relationships and the opportunities we know about. We don't spend nearly enough time measuring what we don't know about the buying organization.
For firms depending on existing-account expansion, that is a serious commercial risk.
A healthy account doesn't mean you're positioned for the next major buying decision.
Buyers Aren't Waiting for Your Sales Kickoff
Now add timing to the equation.
Think about what happens every January and February. Sales kickoff. Quotas. Territory plans. New offerings. Marketing campaigns. Product and service training.
These are important activities. I'm not suggesting we stop doing them.
But while we're getting organized for the year, our customers have been making decisions.
They've been evaluating strategic priorities, building business cases, allocating budgets, and considering which firms they want involved. Bain and Google's Day 1 List research challenged the assumption that vendors enter a buying process on equal footing.
The 2025 6sense Buyer Experience Report reinforces the point. In its research, 95% of purchases went to a provider already on the buyer's initial shortlist. Buying groups frequently ranked preferred vendors before engaging sellers, and the early favorite won most of the time.
That's broader B2B research, not a study limited to professional services. But I believe the implications are significant. By the time your seller sees a qualified opportunity, the buyer may have already decided who they want to work with.
Yet we continue to manage commercial performance largely through pipeline creation, qualification, conversion rates, and forecast accuracy. Those are all necessary measures.
But they tell us how we're performing against opportunities we've identified. They don't tell us how many buying decisions were made without us ever being considered. And that's a very different measure of market performance.
More Prospecting Isn't Going to Fix This
When pipeline falls behind, the response is usually predictable.
Increase activity. Generate more leads. Launch another campaign. Inspect deals more frequently. Push sellers to create opportunities.
Now we have AI making it easier to produce more outreach at greater scale. But more activity doesn't solve a lack of business context.
I see too many campaigns that start with what the firm wants to sell. A new service offering. A capability announcement. A message about how the firm helps companies improve performance. The recipient may have no reason to care.
Gartner reported in 2025 that 73% of surveyed B2B buyers actively avoid suppliers sending irrelevant outreach.
That should concern anyone investing heavily in outbound automation. A COO isn't going to take a meeting because your firm launched a new operational efficiency offering.
But if that COO has been hired to address declining margins, consolidate operations, or improve performance following an acquisition, there's a potentially relevant conversation to have.
The difference is understanding what's happening in the business before deciding what to say.
A signal is context, not permission to pitch. And that's where I believe commercial organizations need to improve. Not simply in finding more names or generating more activity, but in recognizing changes that may lead to buying decisions and understanding the executives involved.
The CFO Sees the Consequences. But Can the Commercial Organization See the Cause?
This is where the pieces come together.
The firm enters Q1 with backlog. Revenue looks reasonably healthy. Its target account strategy directs sellers toward a defined group of companies, whether or not those companies are experiencing conditions that could create near-term demand.
Account managers focus on existing relationships, potentially missing initiatives developing elsewhere in their clients' organizations.
New business teams execute campaigns built around the firm's offerings and annual priorities. Meanwhile, buying decisions continue to develop across the market.
Some are inside strategic accounts. Others are in adjacent companies that never made the target list. And competitors may be establishing relationships and shaping requirements before those opportunities become visible.
By April or May, the CFO starts asking why bookings aren't replacing backlog at the expected pace. The commercial organization responds by increasing activity and accelerating pipeline. But there's only so much time left to identify, win, staff, deliver, and recognize the revenue needed to make the year.
The financial problem shows up in Q2. The commercial visibility problem may have started six months earlier.
That doesn't mean every revenue shortfall is caused by late engagement or poor market intelligence. Demand, execution, pricing, and delivery all matter. But if leadership only examines known pipeline, it may never identify how much of the problem originated outside the pipeline.
Three Questions I'd Ask Before Approving the Next Growth Plan
If I were sitting in the CEO's chair, I'd want the CFO, CRO, and account leadership team to answer three questions together.
First, how much of our revenue plan depends on business we haven't identified or validated?
Not just how much pipeline we have. How much work must still be won, when it needs to start, and how much can realistically be recognized before year-end?
Second, how confident are we that we're looking at the right accounts?
What evidence supports the target list? What has changed in the market since we built it? Which companies outside that list are experiencing developments that could create demand for our services?
And inside our strategic accounts, do we understand the priorities of the executives who will influence the next major buying decisions?
Third, how often are we involved before buyers have defined the problem and identified their preferred providers?
If we can't answer that, we may be measuring sales execution without understanding our actual competitive position.
I wouldn't expect perfect answers. But I would expect a management process capable of improving them. Because these are questions about the revenue plan, resource allocation, and competitive access. They belong with the executive leadership team, not just sales operations.
We May Be Managing the Wrong Part of the Revenue Problem
We've spent years improving sales processes, pipeline management, forecasting, enablement, and seller productivity. I support those investments. I've spent much of my career helping organizations improve them.
But I increasingly believe we're trying to solve too much of the growth problem after an opportunity has already entered the pipeline.
We inspect deals more carefully. We improve qualification. We coach sellers on objections and competitive positioning. Meanwhile, we may have missed the opportunity to influence the buyer when the problem was first taking shape.
And we may not even be looking at the organizations where the next wave of demand is developing.
For CEOs, that's the part of the commercial operating model I'd challenge.
The question isn't whether you need better sales execution. You probably do. Most organizations do. The question is whether you're asking your sellers to deliver a growth plan without giving them enough visibility into where the relevant buying decisions are forming.
Your Q1 revenue may be on plan because of the work you won last year. Whether you make the full-year plan may depend on buying decisions your commercial organization doesn't even know are happening.
I'd want to know that before approving another round of higher quotas, bigger campaigns, and more prospecting activity.
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