Playing devil's advocate, I can see how they thought it'd 'work' because at that point they hadn't even settled on who the mastermind was - they just knew they were going to undo the switch, so for a quick fix that could have worked. The problem is that the "quick fix" devolved into another 8 months of twists and turns.
Yeah, though if it were the quick fix he'd likely have stuck around. I just kinda weep for what happened to the Jessica storyline as a result of this - he clearly wanted her to stick around and play off the massive grudge she has against Spider-Man, but since he debuted her when Ben was Spidey and was leaving the titles, there was no choice other than wrap the story that early.
Glenn says in Life of Reilly that when Budiansky was 'overthrown' due to Harras becoming CEO that it was no small irony, because he even improved the sales after he was instated as Spider editory. Glenn has no shortage of criticisms to the Clone Saga and says Ben had no reason to stay once Peter was established as the actual Peter Parker, so it really doesn't feel like he's trying to play it close to his chest - hell, he even says that a Ben spinoff released at the time would likely get cancelled. So I do believe that if the sales DID dip while Ben remained Spider-Man, he'd have said as much - hell, the entire series of articles literally detail how the good sales protracted the payoff and made Ben remain Scarlet Spider a lot longer. So I'm sure if the sales did get so bad they'd have no chance to reestablish Peter, he'd have said it.Although it was a huge sales disaster keeping Ben as Spidey for an extra 6-7 months, I’m so happy it worked out that way.
His account with Harras being very hands on and wanting his way gels with all other tales of the time - DeFalco was on his F4 run where Reed was dead for years, and word has it Harras simply said he could either bring Reed back or be fired. Harras telling them to extend the story further and just mandating Norman as the villain (no writer was onboard with it) makes sense. And I think that the proof is in the pudding, isn't it? If the sales were so bad, they'd never have dared extend it more than half a year.