BALANCING TODAY'S SALES PRIORITIES

Now that you’re in the third quarter, most of your focus is likely on finishing the end of the year strong—meeting the sales objectives you mapped out at the beginning of the year. And it’s true that the real end-of-the-year push starts now. But it’s also not too early to start planning your sales objectives for next year. The challenge, then, lies in how to balance this year’s very real priorities with the looming new year’s no-less-real priorities.
Sales professionals know where they should be at this time of year. Very few will be at 100 percent of their objectives in the third quarter—for those at 75 percent, most are where they should be. If they stay the course, they can often still come out on plan. But for those behind plan, it’s difficult not to shift into panic mode: “If I’m not where I need to be when Q3 ends, Q4 has to produce even more for me to make my numbers and my quota for the year.”
To avoid getting into a situation where the impulse is to jam product, which puts the opportunity for long-term relationships with clients at risk, it’s helpful to establish a deal review process that looks at past, present and future:

1. Look back and reflect on performance versus goals
2. Look at current activity levels from two perspectives:

a. Explore whether the amount of selling activity is sufficient to support your sales targets
b. Discover to what extent the activities are balanced across the different types of selling work being done (prospecting, qualifying, covering the bases, and closing)

3. Look at the sales funnel in terms of what’s coming down the pike

 

A forward-looking deal review process will help you plan for meeting your end-of-year forecasts—and should also get you thinking, hard, about next fiscal year. Set very specific professional goals for the year. Be specific about how much you hope to deliver; what companies you hope to work with; how much money you plan on making; what areas you hope to improve upon; and what advances you hope to make in your career.

Don’t let tunnel vision trip you up. Keeping one eye on the now with the other on the next (year) is a balancing act that the successful sales professional must master.