A missed quarter produces a predictable week. Sales says the leads were poor. Marketing says the leads were fine and the follow-up was slow. Someone proposes a discount campaign, someone else proposes a new hire, and the board asks for a plan by Friday. Most of those plans treat the miss as a single problem. It is usually one of five, and each needs a different fix.

This is a decision tree for the first week after a miss. Answer the questions in order, with numbers, and stop at the first one that sends you to a fix. The order is deliberate. It starts with the causes that are cheapest to check and most often overlooked.

Before you start: split the miss

Break the gap between target and result into three parts: new business, expansion and churn. A quarter can be missed by losing customers while new sales were on plan, and the fix for that is nowhere near the sales team. Write down how much of the gap each part explains. Then start at question 1.

The decision tree

Question 1: Was the target right for the season?

Compare the quarter with the same quarter last year, not with the quarter before. Hotels buy and implement in their low season, so a vendor's quarters are uneven by nature, as I set out in why hotel tech sales cycles stretch across seasons.

• If the result is in line with the same quarter last year, and the target assumed an even year: the problem is the plan. Fix the forecast first, by spreading the annual target according to when deals actually closed over the past two years. Stop here.

• If the result is clearly below the same quarter last year: go to question 2.

Question 2: Did the gap come from churn or downgrades?

Look at the split you made at the start.

• If lost and reduced accounts explain more of the gap than new business does: fix retention first. List every account lost in the quarter, with the reason and the date of the first warning sign. Stop here.

• If churn was normal: go to question 3.

Question 3: Did the deals slip, or did they die?

Take every deal that was forecast to close in the quarter and did not. Mark each one as slipped, meaning it is still alive with a next step and a date, or lost, meaning it went to a competitor or to no decision.

• If most slipped: fix the forecast and the close plans. Look for a pattern in why they slipped: the owner's approval, a migration date, a contract review. There is usually one late step missing from your stage definitions. Stop here, and check next quarter's pipeline before changing anything else.

• If most were lost: go to question 4.

Question 4: Was there enough qualified pipeline on day one?

Count the qualified opportunities that were open on the first day of the quarter and multiply by your normal win rate.

• If that figure could never have reached the target: the miss was set one or two quarters earlier. Fix demand first, and aim it at the segment where you win most often. Stop here.

• If there was enough pipeline and the win rate fell: go to question 5.

Question 5: Where in the funnel did the win rate fall?

Compare conversion at each stage with the previous four quarters.

• If the drop is between demo and proposal: the wrong prospects are getting demos, or the demo is not answering the operator's questions about risk. Fix qualification and the demo.

• If the drop is between proposal and close: check whether the losses went to competitors or to no decision, and whether price was the stated reason. Pricing problem or sales problem shows how to separate the two.

• If the drop sits with one salesperson or one segment: it is a coaching or a targeting issue. Fix it there and leave the rest alone.

The tree on one page

What not to do in the first week

• Do not discount to pull deals forward. It borrows from next quarter and teaches buyers to wait.

• Do not change three things at once. You will not know which one worked.

• Do not reorganise. A new structure hides the cause for two more quarters.

• Do not skip the split. Without it, the loudest explanation in the room wins.

What to tell the board

A board would sooner hear a narrow diagnosis than a broad plan. Give them four things: how the gap divides between new business, expansion and churn, which question the tree stopped at, the one fix you are making, and the number you expect to move first. In hospitality that number is rarely revenue in the next quarter, because the calendar still decides when hotels sign. Name an earlier measure, such as qualified pipeline or a stage conversion rate, and report on it monthly.

One quarter or a pattern

A single miss with a clear cause needs one fix and a watchful quarter. Two misses in a row, or a tree that stops at a different question depending on who answers it, suggests more than one leak. In that case, look at the whole funnel before choosing, starting with the four places revenue leaks in a hotel tech company.

If you want a structured way to do that on your own numbers, the 12-point leak audit takes about twenty minutes and ranks demand, conversion, activation and retention, so the first fix is the one that costs you most.

Frequently Asked Questions