It’s Crunch Time for #sales Reps
It’s crunch time for #sales reps. The informal end of the business year in the US is Thanksgiving. Things just seem to wind down. Appointments are harder to get. Attention spans wane. Finance teams are resting for their big end of year scramble.
But for sales teams and leaders, the season presents opportunity. If you’ve made the number, great! You can start nurturing a healthy pipeline for next year. Or if you’re in the bonus zone, keep selling!!
If not, here are 3 things you might consider doing to finish strong:
- Prioritize your reality. A good sales process will have revealed your best opportunities. Those prospects that have identified 1.) Budget, 2.) Authority (all the Decision Makers, 3.) Need (that your solution can solve, and 4.) are Time-bound. (BANT). They go to the front of the list. If one of these criteria is missing, they are moved back in priority.
- Leverage End of Year budgets. Many managers have ‘orphaned or stuck funds’ they need to do something with. These are small fractions of budgets, or re-prioritized projects that for whatever reason haven’t been spent and would be lost if they aren’t. I regualrly had a few clients that would spend thousand dollars at the end of the year to reset their budgets. They made up about 1% of my total quota.
- Know the tax code and expense implications for your prospect. The year end is a natural demarcation for taxes. If the prospect company has been profitable through the year, then expenses can help minimize the tax burdens. Know them, use them.
Decisions go through the crucible of the urgent, save now to pay bonuses at Christmas, or delay until next year with a fresh outlook. Good reps help their clients make good decisions and ensure the health of their firms.
One last thing, for #salesteams, revenue earned this year, is always more valuable than revenue earned next year. Pull forward as much as you can. Especially if you have multipliers in play. If you are in #salesleadership, consider offering year-end incentatives. Especially if you’ve never done one before. They could be as simple that just rewarding actvities, e.g. meetings booked, CRM hygene. At the very least, you’ll start the new year strong, and keep the team engaged.
Tags: