This part of the concall disturbed me:
"And one of the things that I have been doing since Q4 of last year is I’m getting much involve personally and going out to the locations where these large opportunities are under way and realize the sales cycle for these big ones is often three maybe in four quarters.
So we’ve been tracking them for a while but when we get to the stage we were in high level negotiations or contract negotiations. I’m personally going there to for two reasons one sometimes its helpful to share that we care enough about these large companies that the CEO’s personally involved and two is like consider across table from them, here what they have to say and then like my own assessment on what are the dealers really going to close and what the timing is.
I got involved personally with the large insurance company that closed in Q1 and I’m involved personally in a couple other large opportunities right now."
Why it is disturbing to me:
1) In a company this size the CEO should be involved in every large opportunity. This is not Oracle or IBM. The CEO of Wave oversees less revenue than a single district, or even a single sales rep, in other software companies. Additionally, he has a 2-star general "Chief-of-staff," Patton, and an "Executive Assistant to the CEO," McCallen, to take care of day-to-day stuff. The office of the CEO is top-heavy and he didn't get involved in large deals? This is consistent with what cypher has been saying.
2) He is explicit that there are only a couple of large deals he is involved in. That's a problem. Two won't do it. In a struggling, small, unknown company, the CEO needs to be very visible to all large prospects and much earlier in the sales cycle.
Being "wrong" has been extremely profitable.
AI
