Versnelling

When the pressure is on now, and the capacity isn’t there

It happens to most commercial teams at some point: several major tenders land at once, right in the period when this quarter’s or this year’s revenue targets have to be met. On paper the ambition is clear, the pressure from leadership or shareholders is concrete. And then it turns out the team simply doesn’t have its hands free. Often at the worst possible moment, a vacancy for sales or bid capacity is still open, or someone has just left. There’s no time to wait three months for that to be resolved. The deals are on the table now.

In that situation, what’s needed in terms of steering changes too. Leadership suddenly wants weekly or biweekly grip and progress reporting, but that overview doesn’t exist right now. There’s no current view of where the tenders stand, where the risks sit, and where course corrections are needed. And by the time that visibility would arrive through the usual channels, it’s already too late to adjust. Meanwhile, there’s an acute need for coaching and sparring on live cases: not as part of a program next quarter, but this week, on this specific tender.

The practical bottlenecks pile up fast. A value proposition or business case has to be ready on short notice, while there’s no internal capacity to write it. Bid quality has to go up immediately, because concrete deals are at risk of being lost to a competitor who bids just a little sharper. AI implementation, which could previously still be explored at leisure, now has to actually start, because the efficiency gains it delivers can no longer wait. And the sales or bid process that really should be redesigned and trained never gets the room, because everyone is busy with the tenders on the table right now.

The risks that come with this are anything but abstract. Concrete deals and tenders are at risk of being lost, simply due to a lack of capacity, not a lack of quality in the offering. The team gets overloaded, and structural overload carries a real risk of people dropping out, exactly when everyone is needed most. Sloppy or late tender submissions cost not only the deal itself, but also your reputation with the client. And the growth ambitions that were on the table go unrealized, simply because the commercial engine can’t keep up with the ambition.