I love quarter end. Having spent many years selling myself, I remember the rush of the countdown and closing everything you can to hit your quota and get into accelerated commissions. I also enjoyed the competition amongst all the reps hustling hard and getting super creative to not only hit their own numbers, but to earn first place on the team. It is a very exciting time.

When I was managing sales, it was slightly different, but always exciting just the sames. For many companies, particularly those that are publicly traded, performance at quarter end is critical for many reasons – keeping budgets, maintaining stock price and investor confidence and perhaps even for earning an investment traunch. While sales performance should be brilliant every day of the year, the truth is that success is a marathon, not a sprint and sales leaders need to push the team hard to ensure there is a strong surge to the finish at each quarter end.

Here are my favorite ways to make sure your team charges hard to close out the quarter:

1. Communicate the Importance of the Target – all the reasons for hitting the targets may be patently obvious to every senior manager in the company, but may not be obvious at the rep level – they are more focused on their own day to day work and deals. Even if the team has heard the message fifty times, it never hurts to say it again and like a coach cheering their team on in the fourth quarter when fatigue may be setting in, you need a rallying cry (or several) to keep the team pushing hard to the finish.
2. Extra Focus on Major Deals – review the best deals with each rep (and not just what is in sales tracking system which doesn’t always give the whole picture) – determine which are the most important deals and make yourself available 24/7 to help close whatever needs to close – often reps can’t get the attention of senior management – now is the time to make sure they can.
3. Don’t Forget the Big Picture – there are four quarters in a year and the highest performing teams maintain momentum throughout the year. Many teams expend an enormous amount of energy closing the quarter and then spend weeks afterwards, picking up the pieces. The team cannot stop prospecting for four weeks while they close the quarter without creating a problem entering the next quarter– a spiff for new qualified leads can help incent the team to do all the things that matter throughout the year.
4. Keep the focus on the revenue target, not the doom and gloom in the news – the news just brings you down – it doesn’t put you in the right frame of mind to be positive in front of customers, and instill their confidence and trust. Focus on the customer and the sale.
5. Don’t let anyone quit – often there are reps who feel like they won’t make their number with only a few weeks left in the quarter – you can’t afford for them to them give up and try to sandbag next quarter…..watch for defeatism on your team and work with them to stay motivated to keep pushing to close deals.
6. Make sure everyone is practicing good discipline and work habits – as the mad dash builds up, reps might be skipping paperwork and saying they will get to it later (sure!) or staying later at the office and then coming in later missing key selling hours. You can’t afford to let them do this.
7. Reach out to all existing customers – customers are often not aware of your targets, so now is a good time to let them know you are prepared to offer the best deals for repeat business and timely purchases.
8. Watch out for Excuses – top performers don’t make excuses, they keep fighting to succeed all the time.
9. Monitor Activity Volumes – are calls, meetings, proposals, etc. in line with typical ratios required to hit targets? This can be your clue to deteriorating effort.
10. Monitor Forecast to Actual – is week to week accuracy improving or deteriorating?
11. Track Deal Slide – what percentage of forecasted deals are sliding into the next quarter? Jump on these and work to keep them in the quarter.
12. Have fun – nurture the friendly competition, the bonding that occurs across the team, and smile as much as possible knowing that you are doing everything you can to win. Your customers will appreciate it and reward you.

To your success!

Photo Credit: Arya Ziai via Compfight cc

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Eliot Burdett

CEO at Peak Sales Recruiting

Before Peak, Eliot spent more than 20 years building and leading companies, where he took the lead in recruiting and managing high performance sales teams. He co-founded Ventrada Systems (mobile applications) and GlobalX (e-commerce software). He was also Vice President of Sales for PointShot Wireless.

Eliot received his B. Comm. from Carleton University and has been honored as a Top 40 Under 40 Award winner.

He co-authored Sales Recruiting 2.0, How to Find Top Performing Sales People, Fast and provides regular insights on sales team management and hiring on the Peak Sales Recruiting Blog.

Connect:

Latest posts by Eliot Burdett (see all)

• 20 Of Our Favorite Books About Sales Management and Sales Leadership – October 20, 2023
• How To Make Progress On Your Sales Goal Without A Sales Leader – September 15, 2021
• Augment Your Recruiting Strategy During “The Great Resignation” – July 26, 2021

In turbulent times, we are going to see higher turnover and layoffs – even in sales. A big issue for departing sales employees is entitlements to commissions.

We often see employment contracts that poorly define the conditions related to treatment of commissions after an employee departs (typically referred to as “trailing commissions”). For example, when someone’s employment is terminated by either party, they may have unpaid commissions and often leave developed sales opportunities that ultimately close after their departure. Are they entitled to any commission on a deal that was highly matured and closed after they depart?

A typical sales comp plan involves a large variable/commission component, so this can be a big issue, particularly when an the departing employee feels they are entitled to additional compensation and the financial amount is worth fighting over.

It is in the employer’s best interests to be proactive and ensure everything is clearly defined in advance, since the courts that are generally sympathetic to the employee in disputes.

While the rules are slightly different depending on which state or provincial laws govern the employment and which party terminates the employment, there are some general rules.

Almost all jurisdictions, consider commissions earned prior to departure as earned income due to the employee regardless of any other circumstances (even if it says otherwise in the contract).

In the absence of conditions in the compensation plan or employment agreement, many courts have awarded pro-rata calculations of commissions or bonuses.

You can avoid costly disputes if detail the how you will pay out commissions after departure.

For employers this means, that if the employee departs on their own will, they forfeit entitlement to commissions associated with any maturing opportunity.

If the employee is terminated, particularly without cause, you may want to consider paying a pro-rated amount based on past performance.

Whatever your company’s policy, we suggest it is fair to both parties, clearly defined and is consistent with the local employment laws governing the employee-employer relationship.

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Eliot Burdett

CEO at Peak Sales Recruiting

Before Peak, Eliot spent more than 20 years building and leading companies, where he took the lead in recruiting and managing high performance sales teams. He co-founded Ventrada Systems (mobile applications) and GlobalX (e-commerce software). He was also Vice President of Sales for PointShot Wireless.

Eliot received his B. Comm. from Carleton University and has been honored as a Top 40 Under 40 Award winner.

He co-authored Sales Recruiting 2.0, How to Find Top Performing Sales People, Fast and provides regular insights on sales team management and hiring on the Peak Sales Recruiting Blog.

Connect:

Latest posts by Eliot Burdett (see all)

• 20 Of Our Favorite Books About Sales Management and Sales Leadership – October 20, 2023
• How To Make Progress On Your Sales Goal Without A Sales Leader – September 15, 2021
• Augment Your Recruiting Strategy During “The Great Resignation” – July 26, 2021

Last week I attended the executive briefing from Miller Heiman which just released its Sales Best Practices Study for 2009. We covered the 2008 Sales Best Practices Study here. This year 3,900+ sales professionals participated in the research.

Some highlights from 2009:

“Successful sales organizations do not do one or two things well; they maintain a high level of performance across all of the selling and sales management activities required to support the sales process.” These include

1. Opportunity Creation
2. Opportunity Management
3. Relationship Management
4. People and Organization
5. Support and Enablement
6. Management Execution

Nearly a third of organizations think they have only a 50% chance of hitting their Q1&Q2 targets this year, and another 50% felt confident with concerns. 80% of World Class organizations expected growth this year and 65% of non-world class organizations. Given current economic climate, I would say that’s a fairly bullish crowd.

World Class organizations (7% of respondents qualify) were able to achieve a higher level of growth vs peers across these metrics:

• Average account billing
• Sales force quota attainment
• Number of qualified opportunities/leads
• Customer retention
• Forecast accuracy

Characteristics of World class organizations that make them different than others:

• high degree of alignment between sales marketing and customer needs (trending up for the last 3 yrs)
• standardized processes for qualifying and selling
• formal strategy for getting concessions in return for price reductions
• clear understanding of client issues prior to offering proposals
• cross department collaboration to manage strategic accounts
• joint long-term planning with key customer,
• knowledge of why top performers are successful and structured programs to share that insight across the team
• sales metrics are aligned with business objectives,
• CRM systems geared to greatly improve effectiveness of the sales organization
• organization is highly structured to learn and adapt.

One interesting factoid as it relates to sales performance – was that top performers placed equal emphasis on the importance of discipline/planning as ability to access and influence senior execs, while average performers placed higher emphasis on senior exec access. There is a lot to be said for the science of sales even at the individual level.

Click here to access the full 2009 Miller Heiman Sales Best Practices Study.

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• About
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Connect:

Eliot Burdett

CEO at Peak Sales Recruiting

Before Peak, Eliot spent more than 20 years building and leading companies, where he took the lead in recruiting and managing high performance sales teams. He co-founded Ventrada Systems (mobile applications) and GlobalX (e-commerce software). He was also Vice President of Sales for PointShot Wireless.

Eliot received his B. Comm. from Carleton University and has been honored as a Top 40 Under 40 Award winner.

He co-authored Sales Recruiting 2.0, How to Find Top Performing Sales People, Fast and provides regular insights on sales team management and hiring on the Peak Sales Recruiting Blog.

Connect:

Latest posts by Eliot Burdett (see all)

• 20 Of Our Favorite Books About Sales Management and Sales Leadership – October 20, 2023
• How To Make Progress On Your Sales Goal Without A Sales Leader – September 15, 2021
• Augment Your Recruiting Strategy During “The Great Resignation” – July 26, 2021

The concept of Sales 2.0 represents an enormous change in the way many companies sell and market. Some of us will be attending The Sales 2.0 Conference in San Francisco on March 4th and 5th to see best practices in action. So it begs the questions: What is Sales 2.0, is it right for your organization and why does it matter to your sale effort?

A BRIEF BACKGROUND ON SALES 2.0

1. Sales 2.0 is an approach to sales and marketing that evolved from increasingly sophisticated CRM applications and growth in adoption rates of sales force automation, the Internet giving us pervasive access to information, and the emergence of rich media and social networking (or Web 2.0 which is the link to Sales 2.0).

2. According to Selling Power Magazine, “Sales 2.0 brings together customer-focused methodologies and productivity-enhancing technologies that transform selling from an art to a science.”

3. There is no Sales 2.0 standard, but applications that claim to be part of this group typically share the following: the collaboration between the customer, sales and marketing organizations, integration of processes, systems-based and repeatable. The best ones are simple, easy to use and compliment existing normal interaction between your company and the its customers.

SO WHY DO YOU CARE?

1. Keep pace with the way customers are buying – with unlimited access to data and best of breed suppliers, customer purchasing behavior has changed. Prospects don’t want to be sold, they increasingly want to buy on their own schedule.

2. More Sales – If you connect with your customer in more meaningful ways, provide more personalized services, create conditions under which they are incented to buy and let them buy on their own schedule, they will purchase more often.

3. Less Effort – pushing hard to close sales is futile and costly, in contrast to the benefits of programs and systems which enable customers to come to you when they are ready to buy.

4. More Predictable Results – with more visibility into customer behavior and better insight into the buying lifecycle, you are in a better position to predict future demand, revenue and growth

5. Accountability – following above, your team is armed with more useful information enabling you to hold them more accountable for contributing to successful outcomes

6. Better Alignment with Marketing – meaningful customer, prospect, market and buying data is shared across your organization to ensure that all functions are working together to better capitalize on opportunities and drive growth.

7. More Professional Service – beyond the benefits of customization, your team projects a far more professional image when it is armed with relevant information insights and in keeping with modern events. There are many more elements to this emerging trend and we are excited to see it coming to fruition.

IS IT RIGHT FOR OUR ORGANIZATION?

Adopting Sales 2.0 requires the right people and the right processes in place. Just like introducing CRM. you can’t throw process and systems on top of a team or culture that is not process oriented and systematic – it won’t work. You need to be ready. You will need to train your people. You will need to be committed.

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Habits, the process in which the brain “converts a sequence of actions into an automatic routine” (Duhigg, 2012), help define the rational behind our personal and professional actions. At the core of every habit exists a loop consisting of a cue, routine, and reward that can be altered, removed, or added (Smith and Bolam, 1990). The consequences of introducing a new habit or making a change to an existing one can be significant and powerful enough to cause a chain reactions with intended and unintended consequences.

Across the sales organization, habits play a crucial role. They help determine, for example, how an account executive prepares to overcome the obstacles that arise when attempting to penetrate a large account. Habits dictate how he or she will respond to a prospects objections over price or limited budget. Habits dictate how a manager will schedule their day, including what prospects they visit, and how much time they spend coaching reps. In sum, habits can dictate selling success.

The strength of a sales organization’s leadership, particularly the Sales VP and regional managers, impacts the production of the sales force. It’s a simple concept that influences the most vital aspect of any business – revenue generation and profit. Knowing that habits directly influence selling behavior and managerial style, we asked the most successful VP Sales how they spend their time and what they focus on to ensure they are meeting or exceeding the company’s sales plan.

Here are the habits of successful sales leaders:

1. Focusing on this Quarter’s Number
– developing strategic deals, supporting the team and holding them accountable, monitoring the funnel, watching key metrics and making adjustments on the fly that secure the quarter. This consumes somewhere between 70-80% of the top VP’s time.

2. Team Communications
– speaking with all the reps, managers and support staff, on a regular basis to ensure expectations, goals and priorities are clearly understood, everyone is aware of relevant company initiatives and market trends, and the team is highly motivated and working together to achieve the targets.

3. Organizational Development
– looking at the forecast for the next Q and the current FY, assessing customer, market and competitive trends, planning what needs to happen to ensure future achievement, assessing the performance of the force and individual team members, identifying new programs for improving the overall performance, and executing the hiring plan.

4. Accountable
– holding themselves accountable for the performance of their teams, as well as holding individual team members accountable. Providing praise and acknowledgment to those reps and mangers who not only hit their sales targets but exceed them, accepting responsibility when strategic accounts are lost, targets missed, or poor hires are made.

5.  Eliminating Obstacles
– continually identifying, focusing on, and providing solutions to obstacles that impede selling success while embracing those solutions that arise organically. Altering team structure, incentives, and selling strategies as the market evolves.

Sources:
The Power of Habit – Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business, Charles Duhigg, 2012
The Neural Network of the Basal Ganglia as Revealed by the Study of Synaptic Connections of Identified Neurones, A. David Smith & J. Paul Bolam, 1990

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Connect:

Eliot Burdett

CEO at Peak Sales Recruiting

Before Peak, Eliot spent more than 20 years building and leading companies, where he took the lead in recruiting and managing high performance sales teams. He co-founded Ventrada Systems (mobile applications) and GlobalX (e-commerce software). He was also Vice President of Sales for PointShot Wireless.

Eliot received his B. Comm. from Carleton University and has been honored as a Top 40 Under 40 Award winner.

He co-authored Sales Recruiting 2.0, How to Find Top Performing Sales People, Fast and provides regular insights on sales team management and hiring on the Peak Sales Recruiting Blog.

Connect:

Latest posts by Eliot Burdett (see all)

• 20 Of Our Favorite Books About Sales Management and Sales Leadership – October 20, 2023
• How To Make Progress On Your Sales Goal Without A Sales Leader – September 15, 2021
• Augment Your Recruiting Strategy During “The Great Resignation” – July 26, 2021

How are your numbers looking one month into the quarter? We polled our network of VP Sales to see what is at the top of their dashboard for evaluating the health of the sales effort running towards quarter end. Here are the top responses:

1.    Pipeline – is it above or below the target multiple (typically 3-4x) and is it leading or trailing?

2.    Activity volumes – are calls, meetings, proposals, etc. in line with ratios required to hit targets?

3.    Forecast to Actual – is week to week accuracy improving or deteriorating?

4.    Slide –  what percentage of forecasted deals are sliding into the next month?

5.    Top customers – how many generated revenue / were contacted?

While each VP’s list might be slightly different one thing is for sure, everyone is tracking things very closely – these are not forgiving times.

To win, your sales force has to be operating at full steam ahead.

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• About
• Latest Posts

Connect:

Eliot Burdett

CEO at Peak Sales Recruiting

Before Peak, Eliot spent more than 20 years building and leading companies, where he took the lead in recruiting and managing high performance sales teams. He co-founded Ventrada Systems (mobile applications) and GlobalX (e-commerce software). He was also Vice President of Sales for PointShot Wireless.

Eliot received his B. Comm. from Carleton University and has been honored as a Top 40 Under 40 Award winner.

He co-authored Sales Recruiting 2.0, How to Find Top Performing Sales People, Fast and provides regular insights on sales team management and hiring on the Peak Sales Recruiting Blog.

Connect:

Latest posts by Eliot Burdett (see all)

• 20 Of Our Favorite Books About Sales Management and Sales Leadership – October 20, 2023
• How To Make Progress On Your Sales Goal Without A Sales Leader – September 15, 2021
• Augment Your Recruiting Strategy During “The Great Resignation” – July 26, 2021

Spending on marketing vs. spending on sales in B2B companies? The debate over which path yields higher results will continue into perpetuity.

In a recent SoftwareCEO.com article, author Maureen Blandford asks some good questions about how marketing investments actually benefit B2B sales:

• “what happens if you stop producing marcom material, for a year? And most CEOs I ask tell me, ‘That won’t really impact our revenue generation.’” … “We don’t want the sales force going in and doing features, functions, and benefits. We want them going in and asking great questions.”
• Do you really need a new expensive logo redesign? “…what we really need to be driven by is, who is our target? How are we going to reach them today? And how can we support the sales force in doing that?“
• “If you’re a CEO of a software company, when some media is covering a big idea in your space, are they calling you for quotes? Do you have anyone on your team who’s considered a guru?
• fuel to the fire…“any Fortune 1000 firm can easily cut their marcom budget by one-third to one-half, and no one would ever know. That’s not risky, that’s just common sense.”

Read  her comments in the April issue of SoftwareCEO.com.
While on the topic of marketing and sales, there is a great article by Seth Godin – Nine things marketing shoudl know about sales

The first and last ones made me laugh….

1. Selling is hard. Harder than you may ever realize. So, if I seem stressed, cut me some slack.

9. I know you’d like to get rid of me and just take orders on the web. But that’s always going to be the low-hanging fruit. The game-changing sales, at least for now, come from real people interacting with real people.

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• About
• Latest Posts

Connect:

Eliot Burdett

CEO at Peak Sales Recruiting

Before Peak, Eliot spent more than 20 years building and leading companies, where he took the lead in recruiting and managing high performance sales teams. He co-founded Ventrada Systems (mobile applications) and GlobalX (e-commerce software). He was also Vice President of Sales for PointShot Wireless.

Eliot received his B. Comm. from Carleton University and has been honored as a Top 40 Under 40 Award winner.

He co-authored Sales Recruiting 2.0, How to Find Top Performing Sales People, Fast and provides regular insights on sales team management and hiring on the Peak Sales Recruiting Blog.

Connect:

Latest posts by Eliot Burdett (see all)

• 20 Of Our Favorite Books About Sales Management and Sales Leadership – October 20, 2023
• How To Make Progress On Your Sales Goal Without A Sales Leader – September 15, 2021
• Augment Your Recruiting Strategy During “The Great Resignation” – July 26, 2021