If you are in sales, it’s clear that this year has been one of the more challenging years.
As most of you know, sales journal is a fictitious number that is used for compensation only. It’s a number that is scalable to increase/decrease compensation. For example, Canon showed profits of 200% because they were able to raise quotas and pay out less compensation. It’s not because we were more profitable on deals. Print volumes are down so where do you think they took the money from? Yeah, let that sink in.
The one number though that will provide some real factual direction though is the billed revenue numbers. Central (with that layup PK gave to his friends) and West (another joke of a quota given to people who stop work at 2:00pm EST) have now dipped under 80%. The East (the FU quota) is just over 80% at 81%. These are the lowest numbers (not counting Covid) that the company has seen in a long time. This just shows they are completely off on their forecasts versus reality.
So what does this all mean. It means that we are not making enough money to support the number of people working here. As we enter the last months of FY2025, don’t expect the company to come out with any promotions or motivators that help you put more money in your pocket. The company can’t pay us while at the same time trying to retain profits for the almighty home office in Japan. The company will have to cut sales positions. I am not trying to scare people but Canon is not going to continue with this structure at these numbers. I highly doubt we will see that bonus in our paycheck at end of December with these type of numbers.
In addition, we will continue to dip on the market share pie chart as lesser end brands meet our current customers demand for a lower price. We are stuck trying to raise the price in an economy where no one is willing to pay more for these products. We are forcing our customers to price us out when we ask them to spend more.
So what happens next? More layoffs? Reduction or increase in quotas? Change in the compensation plan to adapt to the discounting needed to win deals?
All I will say is the decisions that are being made in Melville right now will either power this company through these tough times or drive the ship right into the wall.