Finance questions budget line items, especially headcount, because they're stewarding cash. But if you under-resource critical features, sales can't hit targets and finance gets blamed. Know why each hire matters to revenue and defend it.
Chapters
Do we really need 10 headcount to do that thing? Is this all we really need for next year? I met another company the other day that did that same thing with actually 2 people on another offshore team. Why can't we do that? What is finance really trying to do when they ask that? What we're going to do today is actually we're going to walk through what they really mean when they're asking you those things. And once you know what they actually mean, like, what are we going to do about it? How are we actually going to get ahead of it and how do we actually address it? You have to remind yourself it's finance's job to always question every line item. They just are like, they're the keepers, you know, the stewards, the guardians of the bank account. Right. So Their job is to always challenge every line item in those things. And we should be respectful of the business and we also should be running an efficient machine. However, just because they ask doesn't mean you shouldn't actually say that, "No, we really need it." It's your job to actually go ahead and figure out, like, are these things really necessary? If they are, then keep them there, right? You know, don't get starved for something 'cause you'll pay the penalty on the other side, which is today they're actually trying to actually get the budget done, but tomorrow it'll be like, Hey, why didn't that feature get shipped? Because we have customers X and Y depending on that that actually are gonna drive certain revenue. So like on budget planning day, yeah, they're gonna squeeze you on this, but then the next day when sales says they can't make their number because they can't get the upsell on blah, blah, blah on that feature, and you say, well, it's because we actually didn't hire the people that should do it, like everyone's gonna be screaming the other direction, right? So, Look, you have a job, which is make sure that you're funded up to do the things you need to do.
