There’s No Q5

There are sixty-one working days left for those of us on a calendar year-end.

If you’re sweating whether you’ll achieve your goals, you might be wishing for a Q5.

In my experience, if you are sweating Q4, the highest percentage option is to focus on a defined list of deals that will make a material difference in results – and that can and must close by the end of the quarter – typically deals over a threshold dollar amount.
 

Here’s the Rationale for Focusing on a Defined List of Deals:

• Your sales support resources may be “peanut butter spread” over tens, hundreds, or thousands of deals. This means that the deals you could close may not be getting the resources needed. If support resources aren’t clear on the priority deals, they typically support “the squeakiest wheel.”

   

• It’s also easy for salespeople to spread their time over these must-close deals as well as smaller deals. Salespeople don’t want to put all their “eggs in one basket,” so they will allocate time to less desirable deals. If one of their deals is a must-close for the company, not just for them, they’ll prioritize efforts accordingly.

   

• Sales math is simple. If you can win some or most of your must-win deals, you may have a solid chance of achieving your goals. If you don’t, you may have no chance.

Teams that align behind a defined list of must-close deals achieve more than a battle cry to “close everything you can before the end of the quarter!”

With 61 working days left in the year, you have only 244 working hours left. Read this post on the real number of working hours in a week.

If you wait until next Tuesday to get everyone aligned, you’ll be down to 56 working days and 224 working hours. 

Planning and prescribing how your sales and sales support teams allocate their real working hours for the balance of Q4 may make the difference in achieving your goals or not.

Good luck! 

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