Following on from the last piece about hitting numbers and where they come from, I thought I’d talk about how to say no upwards as once you know where a number is actually coming from, the real question is how you push back on it and get heard, rather than just noted and overruled.
I have lost count of the number of times I have gone into a room, said a number was impossible, and been handed back exactly the same number a week later as if I had never spoken. The only way I have ever managed to actually shift it, not win outright, but genuinely bring it down rather than watch it drift straight back to where it started, was to stop arguing the number itself and start showing my working. Conversion rates. The actual lead lists. Growth on comparable events in the same market over the previous year.
“The only way I have ever managed to actually shift it was to stop arguing the number itself and start showing my working”
And, just as importantly, how much of that number was actually protected rather than earned. A late cancellation on a large stand, or someone wanting to add space at the last minute, usually gets handled by asking for a payment tied into next year’s booking. In doing so, you save this year’s number but push the real problem into the next edition, and that doesn’t always come good.
The expensive lesson
I think this is one of the more expensive lessons in this job, because losing that argument teaches you the wrong thing. Most people walk away believing pushing back doesn’t work, so they stop doing it. They spend years quietly going along with decisions they knew were wrong the moment they were made, always missing their number.
Pushing back on a feeling doesn’t work. Pushing back with evidence does. Nobody teaches you the difference, because from across the table, the two conversations look identical.
“I always went in with conversion rates and lead numbers rather than a general sense that things felt tight”
Show your working
What actually makes something evidence rather than a complaint dressed up better is specific. Most people only bring one part of it. You need to say which number, on which line, and by how much, in language someone could check for themselves, which is why I always went in with conversion rates and lead numbers rather than a general sense that things felt tight.
You also need to show the risk, not just the shortfall, how much of the number is genuinely new business and how much of it is protected by deals that borrow against next year, because managers are set an overall revenue number and have to manage what sits underneath it whether they say so or not.
Are you being asked for revenue or a margin?
It’s worth asking, before any of that, whether what’s being asked of you is a revenue number or a margin number – the two are different asks that require different types of evidence. None of this can be built in the meeting. It gets built beforehand, with the actual numbers next to it, so the meeting is where the case gets tested rather than made up as you go. Turning up with it already written down changes what kind of conversation you’re having.
There’s a real fear underneath this. The fear that saying no upwards makes you look like you’re not a team player. Most of the time I think that’s backwards. A leader setting a number doesn’t have the detail you have, and what they need is someone telling them, with evidence, where it can and can’t be hit. That’s not obstruction, it’s information a decision-maker needs in order to make the right call.
Be careful what you argue for
There’s a cost to doing this well, which is worth being honest about (rather than pretending the story ends once you’ve made your case). Once you’ve been given some say in what the number actually is, and at event director or portfolio director level that becomes real, you’re accountable for coming in close to whatever you agreed. Go wildly over and nobody believes your next forecast either. Come in wildly under and it looks like you still can’t forecast, and the case you argued so carefully stops being trusted.
Barring an actual disaster or a genuine windfall, being close is the job, not a bonus. The number was never yours to set alone; it’s always a group call. What you’re actually negotiating for, every time you do this, is some part of the decision about what that number should be, not the right to be excused from delivering it.
The view from the other side of the table
I have sat on the other side of that table too, running a portfolio where a dozen different people each had their own number to hit, and I can tell you plainly which team members were the hardest to manage. It was never the person who missed badly once, that happens to everyone. It was the person you could never quite trust to come in anywhere near what they had told you.
“Someone who consistently comes in close to what they said they would becomes one of the most valuable people on a team, because you can actually plan around them”
A portfolio only works if you can add the numbers up and believe the total. Someone who consistently comes in close to what they said they would becomes one of the most valuable people on a team, because you can actually plan around them.
Even if you lose, the risk is shared
It will not always move the number back to where you think it should be, and I’d rather say that now than pretend otherwise. What changes is that the risk is no longer only yours. Once it’s been shown in writing, if that risk turns real, it’s something the business already knew about and chose to accept, not something you failed to flag and get blamed for missing.
So next time you’re handed a number you think is wrong, don’t start with whether you disagree. Start with whether you could show your working, the conversion rates, the comparable growth, the actual risk – in a form someone that who has never sat in your seat could follow.
If you can’t do that yet, that’s the real work you need to do. The meeting was never the hard part. You never know, the working out may say, you can hit the new number after all!
