During your executive meeting this morning, the CFO presented the corporate budget for the new fiscal year. In the presentation, the revenue budget for your sales department was presented to you. Gasp! You almost passed out after seeing the number that the company expects your sales team to hit.

Knowing what you know about the team, sales pipeline and marketplace, you don’t see any way that your salesforce will deliver results anywhere near that budget figure.

While your input on revenue was requested during the budgeting phase, the final budget was developed by identifying expected expenses and setting a profit percentage. Thus, the revenue budget has been set by calculation, not by an analysis of resources and opportunities.

As the revenue budget is shared in the meeting, all eyes look to you for confidence in achieving it.

If you go to the CEO and CFO and tell them that this revenue number is a pipedream, you are fearful you will be fired.

If you accept this revenue budget knowing what you know, you set yourself up for failure.

What do you do?