This is usually the time of year when I write a “Year End Sales Strategies” blog post outlining some of the things your sales team should be focused on to make sure you finish the year strong and bring all of the truly closable opportunities across the finish line. Well, this year I don’t need to because Dave Kurlan’s post from Monday sums it up quite nicely. I agree with Dave's main points:
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If your sales team has not been following a solid sales process all year, a “big push” at the end of the year probably won’t have much impact and could very well alienate a high number of potential prospects.
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Minimize the time and attention your sales team dedicates to dropping off gift baskets, bottles of wine, chocolates, nuts, and all the other gifts sales people like to dole out this time of year. Yes, customer appreciation is important and while these gifts can have an impact, your sales people will spend all of their time glad handing with customers if you let them. Have them do it, but with ruthless efficiency.
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Focus on the truly closable opportunities in your pipeline. That means opportunities where a strong case to make a change has been built, your sales people can articulate the impact using your product or service will have on the prospective customer (in terms of time, money, process improvement, strategic advantage, etc.) and can monetize that impact in clear terms, your sales people understand the budget, decision making process, decision criteria, timeline, competitive context, can meet all of the prospective customer’s requirements, and the prospective customer understands and has agreed to accept what your firm can’t do, and finally there’s a meeting scheduled for a final presentation, proposal review, etc. If your sales people cannot answer with an emphatic yes to all of these criteria, it’s not a closable opportunity and will likely not happen in December.
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Focus on booking appointments in January to get off to a strong start. Not just “how-you-doing” appointments or professional visits. Make sure your sales people are asking questions on their initial calls that identify a clear reason to meet. Think quality of appointments not quantity of appointments. Consider the 17 business days in December an opportunity to get a jump on 2015 rather than a frantic sprint to close a bunch of questionable opportunities that are not yet closable and you’ll be in a better position next quarter.
So, that’s a good game plan for your sales team to focus on as 2014 comes to a close. What else? In our consulting practice we encourage our clients to use this time of year as an opportunity for reflection and thoughtful planning.
Here are six (6) exercises you can have your sales managers facilitate in your next sales meeting or in their one-on-one coaching sessions to help take a look back before looking forward. All of the information should be available with minimal effort if you have a reasonably clean CRM system. If not, reviewing your billing reports should help as well.
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Top 5 Customers – Have each sales person identify their top five customers for the current year in their territory. Also have them identify the top five customers from the prior year. What changed? Who fell off the list and why? Who was added to the list and how did we win them? Are there any top five customers from the prior year that should be contacted? Can they book an appointment to see them in January?
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Top 5 Projects – Same thing as above, but instead of looking at total spend look at your biggest projects across all customers. In many cases there will be overlap between the first two lists, but probably not 100%. What were the situations for each of the top five projects? How do they compare to the top five projects from the prior year? Are there any learnings to apply to future prospecting efforts? Can you target specific situations that could be similar?
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Customer Sourcing – Have each sales person review their top X accounts (depending on your business, it could be their top 20, their top 50, or maybe their top 10). Where did they come from? How did they come into your world? Make sure your sales managers ask tough questions and really press for details. Typical sources will be client referrals, in-bound leads, trade show leads, prospecting, etc. What can you learn from this exercise? Are there any key referral sources or trade shows or other sources that should get more of your attention? What patterns can you discern across territories or product lines? Have your sales managers gather this data, discuss it with the sales team, and present it to the leadership team.
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Top Referral Sources – By sales person or territory, who are the top referral sources? What is the strategy for 2015 to keep them engaged and build a deeper relationship?
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Top Compelling Reasons – When looking at top customers or projects, have your sales managers facilitate a discussion with their sales team around why the customers chose to work with your company. What problems did they have that compelled them to go with you? What impact has your solution had on their business? Again, look for trends and patterns from this past year to see if your sales team should shift their focus slightly during sales calls next year.
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Lessons Learned – What experiments did your sales team run this year? Which of them worked better than expected? Which were colossal failures? What should you build on next year? What should you try next year?
The goal of these exercises is to help make sure your sales leaders and their sale people are asking the right questions, learning something from the answers, and making the adjustments needed to drive incremental improvements year after year. As the year comes to a close and your sales team focuses on closing the closable opportunities and booking themselves solid in January, investing a little time for reflection and strategic thinking about what to do differently next year will pay big dividends.
Need help? Contact us and we can help you walk through our territory planning worksheet. This worksheet serves as a guide to facilitate the type of discussion I outline above. What will happen to your revenue next year if your sales organization can find one or two nuggets to build on as they start the new year? What could happen to your revenue if you ignore these exercises and just keep repeating the same year, year after year?