Stop Chasing Numbers at the End of the Quarter
We were in New York training the sales managers of a massive global company. We were discussing account planning and pipeline management. The ideas were flowing until Sarah looked at her calendar, sighed deeply, and said, ‘Well, we won’t be focused on the account development much longer.’
When we asked why, she said, ‘Well, in two weeks time we’ll be looking at the end of the quarter. It’s all short-term thinking from that point forward.’ To a person, all her colleagues agreed.
‘Do your senior managers agree with that approach,’ we asked?
‘Oh, I think so,’ she said with a laugh. With one voice, the entire group repeated their boss’s frustrated message from the previous year: ‘Just sell the s*** off the back of the truck!’
The end of the quarter is approaching, and you know the drill. The focus on account development and strategic planning is about to give way to an obsessive focus on ‘making the numbers.’ If it’s the end of the fiscal year, it’s even worse.
The thoughtful development of a pipeline which was going to sustain your business not just this quarter but next, not just this year but next, is about to be jettisoned in favor of two overriding questions: when will it close and for how much?
You and your salespeople are under pressure to bring deals to completion, and everyone starts selling badly.
They shave margins and abandon new business for the sure repeat.
They close deals the company can’t install, deliver, or service.
They make promises they can’t keep.
They ignore progressing deals that won’t close in the current quarter.
They cannibalize the pipeline, leaving money on the table and weakening next quarter’s prospects.
The feeding frenzy is on, and your people are picking up pennies on the ground when all around them dollar bills are fluttering in the wind.
This foolish pursuit is fueled by exhaustion and pressure - holidays are cancelled, people work insane hours, anxiety fills most conversations - and it’s perpetuated by the drop in sales at the start of the next quarter as everyone recovers from the effort and falls behind target once again.
This sort of behavior becomes institutionalized as the status quo in most businesses. Driven into survival mode by financial fears, executives fall into short-term thinking, and sales managers follow in their wake.
Somebody’s got to wake up and do something different. How about you being that person?
We’re not suggesting that you commit career suicide, but we are suggesting that you lead a quiet, effective revolution - for the sake of your company, your team, and your own sanity.
Here’s one way to go about it: start focusing your team on inputs as well as the outputs.
Let’s be clear. The problem is not the outputs themselves: the targets, the metrics, the quarterly accounting. The problem is getting manic about them - becoming so obsessed with the outputs that you do stupid things that will hurt you both now and later.
Inputs drive outputs, not the other way around. And it’s the wise sales manager that keeps his head at the end of the quarter and leads his team to keep doing the things that will pay off, later if not sooner.
However, for this to work, you’ve got to hold your nerve and commit to the right activities. Most companies don’t give this enough thought. Get hold of this, and you can move yourself and your team forward in a remarkable way.
Use the RACE formula to identify the inputs most important to your team’s sales success:
Typical attitude inputs:
how well people stay in a state of possibility
how quickly they recover from disappointment
how easily they learn new behavior
how deeply they commit to targets
how dedicated they remain to raising their customer’s decision intelligence (DQ)
how many options for action they envision in the face of obstacles
Typical competence inputs:
how familiar they are with the exact steps their customer must take to buy intelligently
how skillfully they listen to customers in order to discover their true needs
how well they utilise a customer’s objections to move them to a decision
how masterful they are at waiting for the right moment to share solutions
how focused they remain on raising their customer’s DQ
Typical execution inputs:
how well do they use the CRM to plan their selling activity instead of reporting on it
how forceful are they in refusing to do things that waste their selling time, especially if you are requiring them
how well do they aim themselves each week
how boldly they lead their customer through these steps
how consistently do they keep deals moving along by finding key next steps to take
Once you’ve got yourself focused on inputs, take you team through a conversation like this one, and start the process of returning sanity to the end of the quarter.
Ask your team to describe what life is like at the end of each quarter. Get out all the details.
Share your commitment to end the ineffective short-term thinking and ask for their commitment as well.
Share your thinking about inputs and suggest that refusing to sacrifice inputs for outputs is a way to restore sanity and generate sales success.
Commit to a personal conversation with each team member in which you will agree 3-5 key inputs that will give the best chance of transforming their sales performance.
Keep those appointments, and, at the end of each one, schedule the next conversation to evaluate both their inputs and their outputs.
This will not be a quick win, but it is a battle worth fighting. Imagine if you could move from quarter to quarter, hitting your targets gracefully, without sacrificing long-term gain and exhausting your people.
Not only will your sales performance move steadily up, you’ll soon have every capable salesperson in the organization wanting to work for you.