I used to work for a company that did about $35M/year turnover, had cash flow problems, and the CEO was yanking money for himself wherever he could, so we had endless 'we need to tighten our belts' speeches. The Service Manager left, tired of being a punching bag, and he wasn't replaced because 'we don't have the money' (CEO's pet project had nine developers on it...). The reasoning was that he doesn't do much more than a support engineer, and we're handling the load fine. The braindead reasoning, that is. It was the Service Manager who organised and chased up the support contracts, worth over $600k in our neck of the woods. We were a medical device company, so we had to keep supporting our gear, and we had customers ringing up begging to pay contracts because they didn't want to be left out in the cold, but there was no-one to prepare them.
Eventually, a year later, the overtaxed sales staff were punted the job. The sales guys were fantastic at sales and very personable, but there's a direct conflict of interest between sales and support contracts, especially when they don't understand the cost of supplying it.
All because the only things the CEO could see were his pet project, the projected sales figure, and any possible way to vacuum money into his pocket (he owned 2/3rds the company, so its long term health was actually in his interest...)
Eventually, a year later, the overtaxed sales staff were punted the job. The sales guys were fantastic at sales and very personable, but there's a direct conflict of interest between sales and support contracts, especially when they don't understand the cost of supplying it.
All because the only things the CEO could see were his pet project, the projected sales figure, and any possible way to vacuum money into his pocket (he owned 2/3rds the company, so its long term health was actually in his interest...)