Sales & SaaS Leverage Notes #5 - Olympics and quarter end

Was hat Olympia mit Sales zu tun? Einiges!

Olympics and Quarter-End – Why Pressure Is Not the Problem

The Winter Olympics are on again and I try to watch most of it mainly Ski jumping, Biathlon, Hockey. I always find it fascinating: athletes train for four years for a few minutes on snow or ice. One run. One jump. One race.

And if they fall, nobody talks about the training volume. Just the result.

Sales is not that different.

You work a full quarter. Pipeline calls. Forecasts. Commit numbers. Then one board meeting decides whether it was “good” or “bad”. But just like in the Olympics, the result you see on stage isn’t decided on that day. It’s decided months before.

The scoreboard is late

At the Winter Olympics you see:

• time

• distance

• rank

• medal

In SaaS the board sees:

• ARR

• ICV / AVC

• growth

• retention

• pipeline coverage

Important? Yes. Predictive? Not really. By the time those numbers move, the story is already written.

What actually decides the outcome

In skiing or biathlon it’s not the medal ceremony that matters. It’s:

• split times

• technique adjustments

• recovery cycles

• mental stability

In Sales it’s:

• velocity in each stage

• conversion rates

• how many deals are single-threaded

• whether your champion just changed jobs

Velocity drops before volume drops. Deals stall before they disappear. Churn signals show up before renewals fail. The data is there.

We just prefer the big number on the slide. Pressure is not the issue

People say: “They can’t handle the pressure.”

But most Olympic failures are not about pressure. They’re about preparation gaps that only become visible under pressure.

Same in business. The quarter doesn’t break in the last week. It breaks quietly weeks earlier. The Olympics just make it visible.

Sales does too.

The question is: are we looking at the right indicators before the scoreboard tells us we’re in trouble? Thanks for reading Hive folks