an eight week cycle, I guess we can close anything that has been there for eight weeks; if I try hard I may close some things that have been in there for the last six or seven weeks; and if you are willing to reduce the price by 40%, I think I can close that company we met with five weeks ago. Oops, price integrity was one of your KPI’s this year. So when “things are back to normal”, what does that mean?

While it is always good to balance short term and long term planning, the reality is that your cycle is your cycle, and unless you can change that, what you reap

Last week, I got an e-mail from a sales training organization with the following question as the headline:

"What are you going to do to insure that your sales goals are met this quarter?" This was to promote a workshop coming up in mid June.

Now I don’t know about you, but my sales cycle is about 8 weeks. A lot of my clients have 2 to 3 month sales cycles. So based on an eight week cycle, my quarter was decided in late April; if you have a three month cycle the die was cast in late March. When this cute and catchy question landed in my junk box, I was more than half way through my third quarter.

Nothing short of a miracle is going to change the results of this quarter at this time in June. Sure, I can go to a good client and “get” him to do something now rather than August, but how many times can you go to the well?

I was to have lunch with a friend a few weeks ago, which happened to be the last week of the month. He called all apologetic, saying he had to cancel our lunch: “Sorry man, but it’s the end of the quarter, we’re all pushing hard to close things, lets meet next week when things will be back to normal.” Knowing his background it wasn’t really his fault, he like many executives heading up sales forces, were trained by other sales leaders with this mediocre outlook. I remember, his former employer forbade vacations or any absence the last week of any given quarter.

This not only insured that there would be no new business activities in the first weeks of the new quarter, as people took time off. But there would also be no prospecting the last week of any quarter, as the VP and Manager would look badly on any activity that wasn’t focused on closing business. So with a three month cycle, they are in fact assuring that there would be little to close same time next quarter. Two weeks or more ignoring the front end of the process (prospecting) ensured that frantic ritual at the end of the next quarter. Except for those caught up in it, it is almost amusing and predictable, like the changing of the seasons.

Did you ever have one of those managers that comes to on March 27th, and says “What can we close by the end of the quarter?” And you think to yourself, gee lets see, you’ve been looking at my pipeline weekly, we have an eight week cycle, I guess we can close anything that has been there for eight weeks; if I try hard I may close some things that have been in there for the last six or seven weeks; and if you are willing to reduce the price by 40%, I think I can close that company we met with five weeks ago. Oops, price integrity was one of your KPI’s this year. So when “things are back to normal”, what does that mean?

While it is always good to balance short term and long term planning, the reality is that your cycle is your cycle, and unless you can change that, what you reap t

e than half way through my third quarter.

Nothing short of a miracle is going to change the results of this quarter at this time in June. Sure, I can go to a good client and “get” him to do something now rather than August, but how many times can you go to the well?

I was to have lunch with a friend a few weeks ago, which happened to be the last week of the month. He called all apologetic, saying he had to cancel our lunch: “Sorry man, but it’s the end of the quarter, we’re all pushing hard to close things, lets meet next week when things will be back to normal.” Knowing his background it wasn’t really his fault, he like many executives heading up sales forces, were trained by other sales leaders with this mediocre outlook. I remember, his former employer forbade vacations or any absence the last week of any given quarter.

This not only insured that there would be no new business activities in the first weeks of the new quarter, as people took time off. But there would also be no prospecting the last week of any quarter, as the VP and Manager would look badly on any activity that wasn’t focused on closing business. So with a three month cycle, they are in fact assuring that there would be little to close same time next quarter. Two weeks or more ignoring the front end of the process (prospecting) ensured that frantic ritual at the end of the next quarter. Except for those caught up in it, it is almost amusing and predictable, like the changing of the seasons.

Did you ever have one of those managers that comes to on March 27th, and says “What can we close by the end of the quarter?” And you think to yourself, gee lets see, you’ve been looking at my pipeline weekly, we have an eight week cycle, I guess we can close anything that has been there for eight weeks; if I try hard I may close some things that have been in there for the last six or seven weeks; and if you are willing to reduce the price by 40%, I think I can close that company we met with five weeks ago. Oops, price integrity was one of your KPI’s this year. So when “things are back to normal”, what does that mean?

While it is always good to balance short term and long term planning, the reality is that your cycle is your cycle, and unless you can change that, what you reap

mal.” Knowing his background it wasn’t really his fault, he like many executives heading up sales forces, were trained by other sales leaders with this mediocre outlook. I remember, his former employer forbade vacations or any absence the last week of any given quarter.

This not only insured that there would be no new business activities in the first weeks of the new quarter, as people took time off. But there would also be no prospecting the last week of any quarter, as the VP and Manager would look badly on any activity that wasn’t focused on closing business. So with a three month cycle, they are in fact assuring that there would be little to close same time next quarter. Two weeks or more ignoring the front end of the process (prospecting) ensured that frantic ritual at the end of the next quarter. Except for those caught up in it, it is almost amusing and predictable, like the changing of the seasons.

Did you ever have one of those managers that comes to on March 27th, and says “What can we close by the end of the quarter?” And you think to yourself, gee lets see, you’ve been looking at my pipeline weekly, we have an eight week cycle, I guess we can close anything that has been there for eight weeks; if I try hard I may close some things that have been in there for the last six or seven weeks; and if you are willing to reduce the price by 40%, I think I can close that company we met with five weeks ago. Oops, price integrity was one of your KPI’s this year. So when “things are back to normal”, what does that mean?

While it is always good to balance short term and long term planning, the reality is that your cycle is your cycle, and unless you can change that, what you reap

So with a three month cycle, they are in fact assuring that there would be little to close same time next quarter. Two weeks or more ignoring the front end of the process (prospecting) ensured that frantic ritual at the end of the next quarter. Except for those caught up in it, it is almost amusing and predictable, like the changing of the seasons.

Did you ever have one of those managers that comes to on March 27th, and says “What can we close by the end of the quarter?” And you think to yourself, gee lets see, you’ve been looking at my pipeline weekly, we have an eight week cycle, I guess we can close anything that has been there for eight weeks; if I try hard I may close some things that have been in there for the last six or seven weeks; and if you are willing to reduce the price by 40%, I think I can close that company we met with five weeks ago. Oops, price integrity was one of your KPI’s this year. So when “things are back to normal”, what does that mean?

While it is always good to balance short term and long term planning, the reality is that your cycle is your cycle, and unless you can change that, what you reap

an eight week cycle, I guess we can close anything that has been there for eight weeks; if I try hard I may close some things that have been in there for the last six or seven weeks; and if you are willing to reduce the price by 40%, I think I can close that company we met with five weeks ago. Oops, price integrity was one of your KPI’s this year. So when “things are back to normal”, what does that mean?

While it is always good to balance short term and long term planning, the reality is that your cycle is your cycle, and unless you can change that, what you reap today, you had to sew a while back, in my case eight weeks ago.

So where does that leave you? With the reality that today is the last day to affect your sales cycle, (with a three month cycle) if you don’t put something in your pipe today, how are you going to close something in three months? So rather than hoping for a miracle at the end of the race, you need to fuel a steady race from the start. My friend and other managers need to come to terms with the fact that if they focused every day on creating new opportunities, then things will close every day x weeks down the road.

The clients who hire me and I don’t have an end of quarter crunch, no end of year crunch, just a steady flow of revenue, in my case eight weeks after I initiate things. Every day I focus on starting something new. Now it’s not always easy, but it’s a lot less stressful, and way more lucrative than worrying about it the least three days of the quarter. Once you recalibrate, you’ll find that your energy and cash flows are balanced, steady and predictable.

To learn what many of our clients have, how to get off the gerbil treadmill and to take the stress out of the process, call us and find out more about our Prospect Management and Prospecting programs.