"We already have all these customers....."

It was 4 in the morning and I stood over a smoking set of sales targets for a software venture within a top 10 company. It all seemed so reasonable. The huge sales targets got red penned and the numbers in the sales plan were doubled. It was a simple job to fit them into the massive spreadsheet and suddenly millions of revenue became even more juicy.

The unease I was feeling was tempered by the millions of existing customers they already had. It was a borderline case of a business but I just hoped that they knew what they were doing. I couldn't stop them but I still felt that horrible sense of dread when the business failed to ignite. I've seen it since too - the juggernaut of a parent company imagining their customers will just fall in love with their new business. It's actually pretty obvious - a bad business concept is a bad business concept.

© Copyright 2005 Richard A D Jones 2005