Two and a half months into her tenure at Yahoo, Marissa Mayer has done a lot to fix the company's culture.
There's free food, new iPhones and Android phones for all, and now we're hearing employees will get new laptops.
One area where Mayer needs to improve is her communication with Yahoo sales people.
We keep hearing from sources – both inside and around the company – that Yahoo sales people are "sitting on their hands" and "adrift." They are waiting for marching orders.
Certainly this problem falls on Yahoo chief revenue officer Michael Barrett first, but it's also true that the buck stops with Mayer. We hear she simply does not communicate as well with these people as she does the rest of Yahoo.
It's going to cost the company.
One plugged in source speculates that all this idleness could cost Yahoo $50 million to $100 million off the top line in Q3, and maybe $100 million to $200 million in Q4. It's not implausible to suggest that Yahoo could soon flirt with un-profitability.
Big picture, it may not matter. Mayer has lots of rope with Yahoo's board of trustees. They're new, too. They picked her instead of interim CEO Ross Levinsohn because they wanted a revolution, not an optimization. She several quarters to prove she's on to something. Eight? 16?
But if you're Mayer or Barrett, why test that patience? Why start the clock?
If the hold-up is that Barrett and Mayer don't actually want to work together, despite the public harmony, Mayer needs to pull the trigger on an exit deal and move on with someone else at the top of Yahoo sales quickly.
Coming soon to SAI, a post on the rumors about how Mayer plans to do that…
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