With a company named QuotaCrush, you would think that my opinion is that salespeople and sales managers should be singularly focused on quota.  In fact, that is completely counter to by entire belief system in terms of the best way to accelerate sales.

The strategies that QuotaCrush presents to its clients do in fact lead to more sales, but as you should notice in what is presented in this blog, the bottom line is about finding the right solution(s) for your prospects and your clients, and ultimately doing the right thing for them.  Its when you do this, that reaching, and ultimately crushing your quota is possible.  In fact, its by continuing to do the right thing that consistently crushing quota becomes possible because trust goes a long way.   A goal of a salesperson should be that people buy from you because of who you are:  that the fact that you are talking about this product and pitching it to me means that you believe in it – and I know you wouldn’t present junk to me.  When you have that type of reputation preceeding you, then you have eliminated some of the largest obstacles in the sales process.

I don’t consider myself to be “slick” in my sales; despite that people that know me say that I approach every conversation with my sales brain on.  Just ask my wife… I cannot tell you how many times she says, “Stop trying to sell me.”    I would never sell something to someone if I didn’t believe that what I was trying to deliver wasn’t a solution to their problem.  That’s not to say that everything I’ve ever sold has worked out perfectly for the customer, but I never went into the sale believing there would be problems – or convincing the customer to buy something they didn’t need.  And… in the situations that the product hasn’t worked out for the customer, I’ve always made steps to make it right.

Q1 has certainly been challenging for getting sales done, and my clients and we have had to make some major concessions and creative pricing techniques in order to get several sales over the finish line.  But… in finding the right solution that is win-win, I believe that these clients will deliver tremendous value over the long run for the salespeople and the company.

Someone joked to me recently that it didn’t matter the economy, that somehow I could figure out how to get people to buy things no matter what.  And, it was that comment that precipitated this post.  It is true that in an up economy and in a down economy, there are ways to make sales.  In my circles, though, its not the slick sales approach that allow this to happen – but the salespeople that understand the macro-environment, and work to find a solution that makes sense for all parties involved.  When this happens, people feel comfortable buying.

I shouldn’t be writing, and you shouldn’t be reading, this post.

Why?  Its the end of the quarter, and if you are in sales, and if you are awake, you should be working on how to use the end of the quarter to get as many deals closed as possible.

This week is a key week to call all of your stalled deals and wake them up with an offer.  This is the time to grab your April and May deals, and see about moving them into Q1.  This is the week to make sure the deals that you are counting on for Q1 – actually happen.

Remember your “If I… will you”,  and call each and every deal that needs movement and use the end of Q1 as an excuse to reach out to them.  Not to pester them, but to reach out to each and every deal in your pipeline no matter how far out and touch them.

Some resistance from salespeople I have managed on this:

• “But my customer told me not to call them until June.”  It doesn’t matter.  Call them now, and say, “I know you said don’t call until June, but I just talked to my VP of Sales and he said that if you can close before the end of the month, I can offer you x.  I thought the offer made a lot of sense and thought I’d reach out just in case.”  Your prospect, if nothing else, should appreciate that you thought of them.  Make sure your offer is genuine and that you actually have something of value – otherwise you are killing the deal.

• “I left them a voicemail last week and they haven’t called back.”  Again, it doesn’t matter.  Call them again and explain the offer.  Leave another message and tell them you will send them an email as well.  (Or vice versa – send an email and then call and tell them you are following up on your email.  Say, “I’m sorry if I’m being a pest, but I wanted to make sure you got the chance to hear about this offer that I’m being allowed to make if you sign before the end of the month.”

• “I’ve already made them a sweetheart deal, and I don’t have anything new to offer”.  Well, I certainly hope that you have already put an expiration on a sweetheart deal, and if you haven’t, then it is time to reach out and make sure that they know the deal expires at midnight on 3/31.

• “I’m afraid I will come off pushy“  This is exactly the point.  I always advocate win-win sales, and therefore, if you are caling just to hound them on where the deal is, then you WILL come off pushy.  You should be calling with a genuine offer and with a genuine desire to get them as a customer at the best deal that you can offer.  This is about applying a pressure point of the end of the quarter to potentially force a decision faster than they wanted to – and giving them an incentive for doing so.

Any other objections you can think of?

OK – stop reading and go sell.  There are only a few weeks left of the quarter.

I’ve been asked by a few clients recently about the value (or lack thereof) of weekly pipeline calls.   I think that this depends entirely on the way in which the meeting is conducted, and the intended purpose of the meeting.

When I started my first company, I had no formal sales training, so my sales were haphazard, my tracking was minimal, and my team was tiny.  While we had ad-hoc meetings about different clients, there was no structured weekly meeting.  Sales certainly got done, and the entire team was often involved, but we didn’t have anything formal – and in many ways this was how we wanted to work.  It was a free form, make it happen approach.

As the team grew, and the team became more disperse, we instituted weekly pipeline calls to make sure that we all got on the phone at least once a week to discuss the challenges and the opportunities of the week prior, the week to come, and also to make sure we were all on target for quota.  The calls were very productive, and became a team-building exercise.  As each salesperson went through their deals, other salespeople would chime in and offer advice on how they handled a particular objection, or obstacle.  The team would also share new points that would resonate as well as success stories that others could use in their prospecting and closing.

This type of sales pipeline call is very good for the health of your team and over-all sales achievement, and is really the only type of call that is worth having.

In one of the sales jobs I had, there was a sales manager who was from the other side of the coin.  On my first pipeline call, I was asked to talk about the deals I was working on.  I chimed in and started talking about a deal that I was enthusistic about but was having some problems with the value proposition and started asking for advice from some other salespeople.  The sales manager immediately stopped the conversation and said, “I hired you because you are a supposedly an expert in sales… if you can’t figure this out on your own, then maybe I hired the wrong person.”  His idea of a sales pipeline call was a weekly bashing of every salesperson on their deals – not a constructive discussion on how to accellerate the funnel of deals.  I went on to become the top salesperson, and we did have a very cohesive team – but that was something we built on the side.  The team had discussions about deals outside of the sales pipeline call – and I’m sure lots of ideas were lost that the entire team could have benefitted from.  What made matters worse, was that from week to week, the sales manager could not even remember which deals were being worked by whom and what the last status was.

If this is the type of pipeline call that you intend to run, then I would say that you should skip it.  The weekly bashing of the salespeople and trying to embarass them into performing, is counter-productive and treating the team like this certainly has little to no value.

So, the bottom line is… if you intend to use the weekly call as a way to elevate and promote sales, then it has value.  If the call is simply going through deals in a circle to embarrass the salespeople falling behind, then I see lass of a value to it.