Sales had a great quarter. Now what?
Overperformance by Sales is supposed to be a good problem to have. For PS it is often just a problem.
The team gets stretched. Timelines slip. Customers who signed during the good quarter start to feel like they are getting a worse experience than they expected. TTV goes up. Renewal risk goes up with it.
Why this keeps happening.
The root cause is almost always the same. Capacity planning did not account for upside scenarios.
Most PS capacity models are built around attainment. What happens if Sales hits their number. Very few are built around overperformance. What happens if Sales hits one hundred and twenty percent.
When the upside scenario is not modeled it catches you flat. And because hiring takes months from decision to productive new hire, by the time you recognize the problem it is already too late to solve it through headcount.
What a proper capacity model accounts for.
Three scenarios. Base case where Sales hits plan. Upside case where Sales overperforms by fifteen to twenty percent. Downside case where Sales misses.
For each scenario you need to know what the implementation demand looks like in hours or weeks per quarter. And you need to compare that to your available capacity accounting for ramp time on any new hires already in the pipeline.
The output is not a single number. It is a range with flags. Here is where we get tight. Here is where we break. Here is the decision point where we need to have made a hire already.
The hiring lead time problem.
The thing most PS leaders underestimate is how long it actually takes from the decision to hire to having someone productive in the seat.
First you need to define the role and get it approved. That can take two to four weeks depending on your finance and HR process. Then you post the role, source candidates, screen, interview, and make an offer. From posting to offer accepted is typically six to ten weeks for an experienced implementation hire. Sometimes longer if the market is competitive or the role is specialized.
Then the candidate has a notice period. Two weeks minimum. Four to six weeks is common at the senior level.
Then they start. And they are not productive on day one. An experienced hire needs sixty to ninety days to understand your product, your customers, and your delivery model well enough to run an engagement independently. Someone newer to the role needs longer.
Add it up. From the moment you decide to hire to the moment you have a productive team member is five to seven months in most cases. Longer if anything goes sideways in the process.
That means any capacity problem you are facing three months from now needed a hiring decision three months ago. The teams that are never caught flat made that decision before the problem was visible.
A capacity model that does not account for hiring lead time is not a capacity model. It is a wishlist.
Want to build this for your team?
Download the Capacity Demand Modeler template below. It includes base, upside, and downside scenario modeling with full hiring lead time built in.
Start for free at app.cadenceops.io/signup