My dog Snickers is spoiled.
I’m up first, so every morning, I feed and walk her long before my wife Ellen wakes up. Then I head into the garage to work out.
A few hours later, when Ellen wakes up, she feeds Snickers “dog cookies” (dehydrated chicken jerky that costs as much as filet mignon).
Snickers loves these so much that sometimes she cannot wait for Ellen to wake up naturally. At these times, Snickers uses her tried and true method to wake Ellen up. She’ll jump up on the bed and bark in Ellen’s face.
It works every time.
Ellen gets up. Snickers gets cookies. And I get yelled at by Ellen.
With just a few weeks left in the quarter, it’s crunch time for your sales team.
You’ve got a number you want to hit. Your team is focused on closing every last deal.
But perhaps, you’re coming up short.
What should you do? Just follow Snickers’ lead.
(No, I don’t recommend jumping on the bed and barking at your spouse).
Do what works every time.
- Get an accurate picture of where each rep stands. If you’ve been using Perfect Forecasting, this will be easy. If not, check out my post on it and then keep reading.
- Identify deals that can close this quarter. Ask your rep, “What is the next step needed to move this deal forward to close this quarter?” Follow this up by asking, “What action will you take to make this happen? When will you do this?”
- Push or kill any deal without an actionable next step. Be ruthless here. If there’s no actionable next step, you might push the Opp’s close date to the next quarter – but only do this if there is a legitimate next step that will occur then. Otherwise, kill the Opp and move on.
- Run the numbers. From this point forward, you and every rep needs to know: Quota, Booked, and To Go, Committed Deals, Upside Deals, GAP
- Create a plan based for hitting the number
Committed deals should have a very clear path to move them to won. The steps to move to won should be well defined with dates and responsibilities spelled out.
Upside deals depend on conditions that you may influence but don’t control such as successful completion of a POC, obtaining signoff from a CFO at the 11th hour, or successfully negotiating legal Ts & Cs.
The GAP is the difference between your Booked + Committed vs. Quota. If you’re having a good quarter, you’ll have no GAP. In that case, focus your efforts on blowing out the number. If there is a GAP, help your rep build a plan to fill it.
What to watch for:
Most reps are overly optimistic about their pipeline. They’ll say an Opportunity has a 50% chance of closing. Translation: “I have no idea if this deal will close.”
Reps are not always sure what the next step should be. That’s why a pipeline deep dive with you is so critical. Run through a few Opps with the rep then have him cleanup the rest once he knows what to do. Sometimes I’ll pair up reps to help each other do a pipeline deep dive. Reviewing deals with another rep is one of the best ways to eliminate fluff.
Know the Process. Make sure your sales reps know every step of the process required for a customer to place an order. This begins with the customer’s processes for technical approvals, financial approvals and legal approvals then continues to include your internal processes for completing the sale. Too many end of quarter deals slip because of a missing signature, a delayed credit approval, or someone leaving early for the holiday. You can avoid 95% of this by knowing the sales process.
Reps don’t like to move Opps to Closed Lost. Too bad. As managers, it’s our job to guide our reps to focus effort where they’ll get the best return. Now is not the time for “hope”, it’s the time to focus 150% on real winnable business.
Fill the GAP by pulling in deals from next quarter to close early. Here’s where you, as the manager, can really help your reps. Some prospects will close early for a small discount. Others will have end of quarter money to spend. Still others may have planned to order later but would be willing to buy now if they were asked.
Call in favors if your rep is working to close a deal with someone who they’ve built a relationship with. I’ve done this with resellers and customers before. The conversation is simple:
“Is there anything you can do to help me bring in this deal before the end of the quarter? It would really mean a lot to me.”
or
“Do you have any other orders you could put through before the end of the quarter? It would really help me out.”
I don’t like to call in personal favors from customers, partners and resellers often, so I reserve this for times when it really would help.
When everything else is done, refocus on building pipeline. At some point, your list of Committed and Upside deals will become very small and there will be nothing left to do but wait for the POs.
Now it is time to refocus on aggressively building pipeline for next quarter. I’ve found that this activity, which is usually neglected at the end of the quarter, provides an unusually high return. For some reason, prospecting during crunch time always seems to churn up a few more wins.
Good luck and good selling,
Steve