Are you tired of getting most of your deals towards the end of the month? Or even worse, the very last day of the month? Depending on your quota and compensation structure, most salespeople will close the majority of their business at the very end of the month. This is especially true for a salesforce with a monthly quota structure. Even with a quarterly structure, still most reps bring in the lion’s share of the business towards the end of the quarter. This causes a lot of stress. For you the salesperson, for the sales leader, and for all the other departments in the company that have to handle this heavy volume of new orders in a very compressed timeframe.
As a sales rep I would always get nervous and stressed out if I was targeting a deal to come in by the end of a given month. It always seemed like the days would fly by and then the customer would be on vacation. Or out of office. Or the real signer was out of office. Next it was someone else who would be sick for a couple of days only stalling things up further. And then the customer would need to see the product one more time and have another meeting. Sound familiar?
It felt like pretty much everything was working against me with getting the deal done by the end of the month. Then it would come down to the wire with just a few days left in the month. Now the stress was really on. Only to be told by the customer, “We are really close, we just need a little more time.” Hearing that wasn’t exactly music to my ears. Now in complete panic, we would offer up aggressive end of month incentives and discounts to get the deal done. Needlessly throwing dollars out the window in order to make things happen. Sometimes it worked. Often times it didn’t. What stress that caused when the deal pushed. It turned into a giant disappointment for me, the rep, for my boss who I never want to let down, for the company, and for my wallet.
As a professional salesperson that is going to the top, you can avoid all of that. You don’t need or want that kind of stress. Here is what you can do differently to get deals to close early on in the month, or when you want them to close. You target a specific date and you get mutual agreement with your customer on moving ahead by that date. I know that this sounds crazy simple and you might be thinking that there is a lot more to it than that. There isn’t. Let me elaborate with a little insight so you can start doing this yourself.
When you are working with your customer in an active sales engagement, you always want to ask them early on about their timeframe. Get an understanding of their timing. Their timing to purchase and to start using or implementing your product. Understand what’s driving that timeframe, or why it may or may not be important to the customer. Okay, so you did this. You also want to ask from time to time during the sales cycle for confirmation on their timeframe, ensuring that it hasn’t changed. When you do this, you would be surprised at how many customers will only confirm that their timing has changed, but you would never have known otherwise if you didn’t ask! Why? Some customers know that telling a salesperson that their timeframe has pushed would probably be perceived as bad news to the salesperson. They would rather just avoid talking about it altogether. So ask!
Okay, so you have asked and confirmed the client’s timeframe on a handful of occasions. You are also pretty far down the road with your client. Meaning, they have seen your product and are comfortable with it. They like it. They want it. They like you. You have established trust and credibility. They see the value. All follow up questions/items have been closed out. Maybe there might be just one or two small items that have to be addressed but nothing serious.
At this point, it is your opportunity to get a solid agreement from the customer on purchasing by a specific date. You want to literally ask your customer this: “Bob, we are pretty far down the line with everything. Are you good with moving ahead with our proposal and if so, do you think we can make it happen by say, February 12th?” Or you could ask in a similar manner, “Bob are we good to move ahead with the order by the end of this week?” No matter what the day or date is, the point I want to make is that you are asking and you are letting Bob agree (or disagree) to moving ahead by that specific day or date.
This is a direct line of questioning with Bob. It is not beating around the bush or open-ended. It is not vague such as “Do you think we could move ahead over the next few weeks or so.” Vagueness (generalities) will kill you! You have to be direct. You earned this right at this point in the game. You worked your tail off for Bob. You bent over backwards to meet all of his needs. He likes you and you know he needs your product and wants to do business with you. Be direct and get agreement on a specific date to get the deal done.
When you ask this question to Bob, Bob is going to either pause, and then respond to you by saying, “Yes.., we can do that,” or he might flat-out tell you no, followed up with some additional color on what else needs to happen before we can move ahead. Either way, it’s a win! By the way, always look at the calendar first when you are picking a proposed date for the deal to come in. Pick a day in the middle of the month if that is what you want. Pick the first Friday of the month if you want that day. Pick next Tuesday for that matter! You decide on the date!!! Once you decide on the date, you are merely confirming acceptance of it with Bob, your customer.
Now if Bob gives you a “yes” to moving ahead by that date. Take it a step further. Respond back with something like this, “Oh Bob this is fantastic news, I really appreciate it, I truly do and I thank you for this business… I have to ask, what else on your end needs to happen to make this work… any obstacles, or people out of the office, or anything like that?” After asking this question, Bob may reveal some additional info that you may want to be in the loop on so that you can assess the likelihood of the deal coming in on the day that you just agreed to. If he responds with nothing substantial, you want to follow up one more time with something like this, “Excellent Bob. So let’s target the 12th (or whatever day/date you agreed upon) to get the signed proposal back… if you are totally comfortable and good with that…?” Again, you are further qualifying and giving Bob a way out if there is some doubt in his mind that the 12th may not exactly be completely solid on his end.
Lastly, before you wrap up your conversation with Bob, get a date for a next step, or two, with him before the 12th (maybe another time to walk him through where he signs, or what happens next after the order is placed). Get this date well ahead of the 12th. The purpose: at the end of this next step/follow up call, you can confirm yet again that Bob is still on track for getting the signed proposal back to you by the 12th, when you ask him. If you don’t do this, you might be in for a surprise if things changed on Bob’s end and he doesn’t tell you…
I did the above all the time as a #1 seller and it works just about all the time. Of course it is not a perfect world and sometimes things do push even when you do all this. Having said that, if you do the above, you are going to be closing more deals and closing them when you want them closed than ever before. Your forecasting accuracy will be spot-on. The end of month or end of quarter won’t be stressful. I absolutely LOVED the feeling of being at my quota for the month when it was only the 15th! That gave me two more weeks to get more deals and blow out the month! It also gave me more time to focus on lining up the very next month.
When you do the above, you get into a powerful rhythm of closing deals sooner and more frequently. You gain leaps and bounds over your peers. The next thing that happens: you are already at your annual quota and it is only September! Oh what a feeling!
-Happy Selling!