How to Hit Your Number Without End-of-Quarter Panic

[MUSIC] This episode is brought to you in part by the following TSC sponsors. [MUSIC] You don't become the world's most valuable woman sports franchise by accident. Angel City Football Club did it with a little help from HubSpot. When it started, data was housed across multiple systems. HubSpot unified their website, email, and fan experience in one platform. This allowed their small team of three to build an entire website in just three days. Three days. The results, nearly 350 new signups a week, and 300% database growth in just two years. Visit HubSpot.com to hear how HubSpot can help your team grow better. Finding the right lead can feel like an endless search for sellers. What if you could get to the right conversations faster? From finding new leads to strengthen in existing relationships, LinkedIn Sales Navigator is your strategic AI-powered partner. It cuts through the noise with real-time data and insight backed by LinkedIn's network of over one billion professionals. Try it for free for 60 days at linkedin.com/tse. Terms and conditions apply. [MUSIC] [MUSIC] Many times sales people find themselves in a whole heap of trouble when it comes to the end of the quarter like we're getting to right now in March. And the reason is they wait until the very end to try to hit their numbers. But I have a simple strategy, a stupidly simple idea that you can apply that can help you to make sure that you're hitting your numbers consistently with the right habits that lead to the end result at the end of the quarter. So you shadow your numbers. Check it out. [MUSIC] Hey, hey, hey, everyone. Welcome to another great episode of the Sales Evangelist podcast. I'm your host, Donald C. Kaleee. They sales the evangelist. And I'm so excited for another great episode. I'm so excited to be here with you today. On this episode, we're going to be talking about a concept called a 12-week year. Now many of you as salespeople, I know the scenario. You are working so hard. You're doing things on a day-to-day level. You're getting pulled in 6,000 directions. At the end of the quarter, you actually try to get everything done. So you can hit the numbers. But what it all comes down to, you realize that you just are not able to get everything that you want to get done in that short period of time. And it's just stressful. At the last week of that quarter, you're trying to get any deal possible across the line. Now the issue happens, now this on the other side too, some sales rep, they thrive in those scenarios. They start to close deals. And the reason is because there's an end, there's an accountability. But wouldn't it be so much better if you could do this throughout the whole quarter so that the end of the quarter life is good? You are naturally succeeding. You're not only hitting your quota, but you're surpassing your quota, and you're making a lot more money. That's what I want to help you do today. This podcast is designed to do two things. One, to help you to build pipeline. And two, to help you to accelerate deals to the pipeline faster. The concept that I'm going to tell you applies to both of those today. And I hope that you can find great benefit from it as I have done over the years. Now there's a book that is called a 12 week year. I don't own that book. I don't do anything with that book. It's just a great principle, great concept. And the idea behind this is that instead of waiting for looking at your whole year in the format of, you know, the end of the year, the end of the year, you're going to be hitting your total quota, try to break that down by quarter. And think of your 12 weeks as if it's one year. Try to do all you can to get all your success in 12 weeks rather than thinking you have the whole year to get your numbers. The whole different mind shift and that helps us to perform so well. But now, think about it. You come down to the quarter and you think, "Can I have numbers I need to hit by the end of this quarter?" What happens often times the salespeople think, "Well, I have a whole month. The last month I can really thrive." And that's where I really see my success. And that's what usually we get our most of our money. But is it really that's what it is? Or is that just a construct of your habits? And I believe there's a construct of your habits. You may not do the work necessary to hit the numbers onto the last quarter. But if you start doing that in queue in this month, specifically what I need to accomplish in this month, what would that look like? And that's what we want to tackle today. So, I mean, you're scrambling end of the quarter, you're trying to do all you can to get to the point, get to the numbers you want to achieve. And oftentimes you find yourself just really struggling. And it's just stressful and it's not needed. So I'm going to give you some points today. I'm going to outline several segments that we're going to, several points that we're going to dissect in. Now, the first point I want to cover is that the 90 days doesn't feel long. When you look at it 90 days, you can see that it's way shorted and thinking of your whole year. Like, I just need to get my quota for the whole year. So I really want you to change your paradigm and just focus on 90 days. That's what we're going to do. Less stress, not much of an issue. You're just going to think of it as easier to manage. So let me give you some points that typically happen. Is that salespeople think usually that I have time? And that's one of the things that cause you to delay. And that we overthink. The next thing that we find is that managers think that, well, the sales rep will pick it up. They have time to get to the point. It's only been a one month, right? Or it's only been, you know, this a couple months. So they have time to pick it up. The other part is that pipeline neglect early in the quarter. As I mentioned, we do so many other things. Our habits don't tie to the pipeline. We say we're being busy when it actually we're doing busy work. And in the end of the quarter, that's when we become this hero and that becomes this overplayed strategy that I don't feel is helpful. So here's what I'd like for you to do. Quarters don't fail at the end. Quarters actually fail at the beginning. One more time for the folks in the back. Your quarter doesn't fail at the end. Your quarter, your quarter, like the quarter, January, February, March actually fails at the beginning. It's really the first two weeks of the month. That's where you start to see that can make a pretty good determination of where you're going to be at the very end. So the next thing I want you to do is again, take this concept of the 12 week. I want you to treat the 12 week as if it's one full year that I want you to break it down to this. I want you to have don't think annual. We talked about that as well. Think on that one period of time and that thing on just that quarter right now. And if you start to just think on, again, check out the book first off. But if you just start to think that I'm focusing only on one quarter, your whole year quota actually is so much more attainable at this point. [MUSIC PLAYING] Mistakes that made me hosted by Iman Ismail is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Mistakes that made me is the podcast that asks extraordinary business owners to share their biggest business mistakes. So you know what not to do on your road to success. Join Ismail Ismail as she chats with some of the smartest minds in business about how to push through failure and accept it as an important and necessary part of building a business. Because it turns out your biggest business mistakes often lead to your biggest lessons and then your biggest blessings. One of the latest episodes that just totally resonated was ignoring my cash flow almost cost me my business. And many of us can relate to that. If you run a business, sometimes you kind and not focus on the most important thing. The guest was Sandra Booker. Ismail has amazing insights and amazing guests and I highly recommend you check out the podcast. Listen to mistakes that made me wherever you get your podcast. Since 2013, we launched this podcast. The goal of the podcast was to share wealth of information. And I feel that we've successfully done so. As a natural byproduct, listeners like you would reach out and ask could I coach them, could I train their team, could I come and speak in an SKO, could I consult for them. And that is how we gain the majority of our business and still to this day. So in 2019, one of our clients saw what we did and asked, could we do that for them? We experimented with it and we started a podcast production agency. Now we create podcasts for some of the biggest brands in the world. And it's amazing. I would love to show you and your team how we can create podcasts for you and use it as an entertaining source but also educational and elite generation. If you're interested, go to bluemangostudios.com. Again, bluemangostudios.com and our team could show you exactly what we did. It's amazing. The second piece I want to tie into is how you can implement this. The first thing I want you to do is define your outcome. So let's say by the end of this 12 week, what I want to do. I want to be able to get, I don't know, what's the reasonable number guys. Here's something that I'll put. I use this when my sales mastermind all the time. I will close $300,000 in new business over the next 12 weeks. So let's take that as our goal. The next piece I want to show you, and you can see this on the screen. I'm going to have this pop up here. Is that I want you to break that down into indicators. So not just, I'm going to, each deal is whatever, is $30,000 and that's it. Here's the thing that I would like for you to do, with your indicators. I want you to look at the average deal size. So let's say this 30K. I want you to look at how many deals you need. What's your close rate? Say average close rate is 25, maybe 30%. Let's keep it to 25. That means you need 40 qualified opportunities. That's 80 discovery calls generally. That's about 400 conversations. And that's about 1200 outreach attempts. That's your emails, your phones, and so forth. If I know that going into the quarter, that's what I need to do to be able to achieve the end outcome. You best believe that I have mile markers that I can hit. Now you can track this on your own. This is where I recommend ProspectPro.io. I told you about my little software. It's a spreadsheet that I had. But this helped me adopt the 12 week year better because now I knew exactly what I needed to do every single day to make sure that I'm feeding the beast so to speak so I can get the outcome at the end of this month that can help me get the outcome I need by the end of the quarter. And this is why I go back to this idea that the first two weeks of that quarter is going to be determining because if you're not doing this stuff the first two weeks is going to reveal itself. You're not doing the habits at the end of the outcome. And oftentimes again, many salespeople are flying blind on the habits. They don't know what numbers they need to be hitting. I don't care how you look at it. This is a science and an art career and you need to have the science down so you can do the artistic part, have the conversation. So once you figure out your metrics and if you don't know how to do that, you can use the example I have in ProspectPro.io. What we did, we created a place for you to put a goal that you want, whether it's a number of appointments and a number of conversations, the number of deals close by the end of the quarter or month or whatever. And then on a daily, you can see what you must achieve to be able to end with that number. But the daily activity comes based on your behavior, come based on the logging of your calls. You have to put your data in on the day to day level. And then over time, it starts to give, once you have enough data, it starts to give you predictions. Like this is what you should be doing as your outreach activity level to be able to get to the end result. Now the third thing I want to go into is then weekly scoreboard. You have to measure. So here, a weekly scoreboard might look like this. Every week you should know how many outreach attempts, how many conversations, how many meetings, how many pipeline created, how many deals advanced. You gotta get that. If you don't get that, I'm telling you, it's going to be, you're gonna do busy work and busy work doesn't necessarily equals success. This leaves no guessing, this leaves no vibes, and this leads, this leaves no, I feel busy. It actually gives you clear results, and that's what I love about it. The next thing I want you to do is then daily execution of that block. So as you know, I talk a lot about time blocking, blocking appropriately. Here's where I say, this is where most reps fails because instead of checking emails on a day-to-day level, reacting to Slack or reacting to all these other dumb things, I'm just gonna be straight up with you that comes from all the stuff that pops up in your day-to-day effort. They focus on those 90 minute blocks. So for this 90 minute minimum, I'm gonna do pipeline creation because I have to hit that number. I know that if I hit my outreach number, the opportunities are gonna come. I'm gonna get the conversation, but that must happen. It becomes non-negotiable, and then also they follow that block. They switch to times around where they do the outreach, but they're following it every day, at least at 90 minutes is there so I can do the things, the outreach activity so I can get the appointments and so forth. So here's one piece I want you to understand. You don't rise to your goals, you fall to your daily structure. I want you to just understand that. You don't rise to your goals, you fall to your daily structures. And oftentimes our daily structures are around dumb silly notifications like your Yahoo or your ESPN notification. That's not leading towards your end result of being a good seller. The next piece that I want you to go into is, so I guess really we did that, those little steps that I want you to follow, but now we're going into another component. Here's why this eliminate the end of quarter panic. Because listen, if you are building pipeline daily, you're advancing deals weekly, and you're getting, you're actually hitting your numbers every single month. What tends to happen as a result that I find from salespeople is that the chaos is not there at the end of the month, and they don't find themselves getting on pips or getting yelled at by their management. What tends to happen is that by the end of the 12 week, they are able to coast into it naturally. And if I look at a sales rep and I see them panicking at week 12, I know that between week one and two, as I shared, but especially between one and six, those first six weeks, they were just not doing their, not hitting their numbers, they're not hitting their goals. I've seen this time and time again, and I've seen it with myself. So in order to get rid of that panic, please for the love of everything that's holy, I need you to follow the simple idea, make sure you're tracking your numbers, but then also make sure you're being confident and hitting your day-to-day activity, which leads to the weekly activity and leads to the monthly activity. Now here's what you must do as a manager to make sure this is enforced, this culture is enforced. Stop focusing on the annual goals, and don't even focus on just a quarter alone. Sometimes you have sales reps that they know they need to hit, like 300,000, but they end up a quarter, but they have no clue how to get there. And sometimes we have to give them direct guidance. What I would encourage you to do is that I need you to manage activities. Now please, please, please, please, let's understand this. I am not telling you that you need to be micromanaging, but you just need to make sure that your reps are hitting the reps, they're doing the activities on a day-to-day basis that lead to the end result. Now in ProspectPro.io, I'm not just selling my stuff, it's a free-freaking software, but in ProspectPro, one of the things you can do, you can create a team view. So then now your team, you as a manager, can have the team focus, and then you also can use it as a leaderboard, where you can have it up and you can see, and the team members can see where everybody is performing, where we were at on our stats on a day-to-day level. And the other clear thing that I want to make sure you have here that people understand is that this must be reviewed. Let's say you have ProspectPro.io and you're putting stuff in, but it's not being reviewed, you're not reviewing your performances, and as a manager, you're not reviewing that sales reps performance, it's gonna come down to the end that this doesn't really matter. The other critical part to this too is, again, it's not about the volume, it's about the quality of the activities. So I want you to do the quality activities because that does matter, and that's where I need you to perform as a sales rep. But if you don't have that quality outcome activities, I mean, it's done. There's a point that everyone needs to understand. Do your reps, this is a question I want you to manage just to lead with. I put it here, so I want you to see it. Do your reps know exactly what they must do, what must happen every week to stay on pace? If that answer is no, then we need to adjust the culture, and you can do that easily with ProspectPro.io. Every rep needs to know exactly what she or he must do on a day-to-day weekly basis to hit their numbers. I have had 16 members that I thought it was very clear to of what they need to do to be successful, and then I had parting interviews with them where they're in tears, and they share with me, I didn't know, I didn't understand, and here I am assuming, but it was a hard lesson learned. That's why I'm able to speak on podcasts like this and to give you advice because I went through trenches and made mistakes, so you gotta do it. For sellers, it can feel like an endless search for the right clients. With LinkedIn Sales Navigator, you can. In today's noisy market, sales navigator cuts through the clutter with real-time data and AI-powered insights. You will find better fit leads, get more replies with personalized outreach, and stay informed to anticipate customer needs and strengthen your relationships. It works. It's selling with precision and confidence. This is all backed by access to LinkedIn's network of over one billion professionals. It's the world's most dynamic buyers network working for you. Accelerate your sales with LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Try LinkedIn Sales Navigator now with a free 60-day trial at LinkedIn.com/TSE. That's LinkedIn.com/TSE. Terms in a condition supply. The next piece I want you to understand is there's common mistakes when using the 12-week year. So you hear some of the things that I've seen over the years that sales rep have. One, they're setting too many goals. Number two, they're not tracking them daily. Three, they're not adjusting after week four. And this is important. If your goal is not being attained, it's critical that you just double back and you adjust accordingly. Number five, they're waiting to get motivated. That one sucks. Is that number five? Number four, they're waiting to get motivated. Is number four. They're waiting to get motivated. If you're waiting to get motivated, you're never ever going to get motivated. You have to make it happen. You have to get on comfortable. And the fifth one, they treat it like a motivational concept instead of an operating system. And oftentimes when you treat like a motivational process is because you're thinking, "Yeah, I'm going to do everything in 12 weeks. I'm going to be awesome," but they don't have the system. And that's where prospectpro.io comes in. It forces you to be able to set those parameters. So you can track your activities on a day-to-day level so you can know what you should be hitting. Now, the final thing I want to give you an example. I want to paint a picture for you. And hopefully this can make sense as you're looking at it. The target is 15 deals in 12 weeks. Let's say that's where it's at. Weekly commitment is I would like each rep, each rep, or the sales rep, to have 150 new outbound touches weekly. 12 conversations, eight meetings, three proposals. Now, please understand your touches, this sounds so wrong, but the daily outreach activity may be a lot higher in your industry or maybe for the product that you're selling. So perhaps that 150 is not there, but you get the idea, though, those four areas, the outbound activities, conversations, the meetings, and then the proposals. So let's say that's the case. The daily non-negotiables, like here's some things that you might find doing the number of outreaches. Based on this 150 example, that's probably about 30 outreach per day. Like these are personalized outreaches to these prospect. You're doing five follow-ups, at least two length and voice messages, and then you're doing one video message. So you're doing these activities if you're doing that on a day-to-day basis, it's just a law from the averages. You're going to see the results. And I don't care how you skin the cat. Sorry, if there's any animal lovers out there and cat lovers, I'm not skinning any cat. But just go with the concept. No matter how you do your sales, no matter how you do your approach, there has to be a system. There has to be something that you're measuring on a day-to-day level. It's gonna be perfect. Perfect. Are you gonna have some off days? Of course you are. Just like anyone who works out. You have some good days and bad days. But you're gonna have mostly good days because of the simple fact that you're doing this on a day-to-day level and the law of nature, the law of averages are just gonna work in your favors, like compound effect. It just works time and time again. That's how you make this tangible. Now here's in closing what I want you to understand. Sales is not one in the last 14 days of the quarter. It's one in the first 14 days. Those first two weeks are so precious of a quarter. You are doing it right now. Now if you follow the 12 week year concept, here is what happens. One, urgency increases on a day-to-day level. Number two, you stay focused and you're focused increases. Naturally, number three, you're more disciplined and your ability to execute improves. Number four, stress decreases. Just plain and simple. You're not gonna have that fourth quarter blitz anymore. Life is gonna be so much easier because you have pipeline and you're not stressing about it at the end of the quarter. Now here's the crazy part. Because you're not so desperate on a day-to-day level, you don't have commission breath, your closing rate increases because you're not desperate on the four deals that are sitting there. You have the deals in your pipeline already. You have two to three ex-your-sales pipeline and you know with your heart of heart that if you just follow the method by the end, you're gonna have more than you need. And that, my friend, allows for you to have a next level of confidence. It just changes the game. So I want you to apply these things. I want you to test them out. The 12-week year is not too difficult. I want you to use ProspectPro.io and see how simple it is can be to help you out to track your performance on a day-to-day level. Now, the great thing about this is like anything else. If you do it, you see the results. If you don't and you don't see the result, but I encourage you to do that. You can check out the book, The 12-week year as well and you can find information about that in the show notes. Also, you can find it on Amazon. Now listen, I want you to thrive. I want you to succeed. If you want that accountability, we have a sales mastermind. And imagine how when you put all of these pieces together, you're using ProspectPro.io. You have the 12-week year concept down and you have a mastermind for when you do getting pickles that you can work with other sales people. You can practice. You can get some motivation. You can get some insights. You can get some strategy. You can do some role-place on how to overcome some of those big blockers that you're facing. Once you have this group, man, life changes. I want you to check it out. Go to the salesavangilist.com/mastermind. The salesavangilist.com/mastermind. I would love to have you. As always, I want you to thrive. But most importantly, I want you to race the level of thinking. I want you to go out and do big things. See you on the next one. (upbeat music) The salesavangilist podcast is created by the salesavangilist sales training organization. It is produced by TSE Studios, our podcast production manager is Nancy Paul. Our audio engineer is Jershian O'Biole. Our video engineer is Desson Kunado. Guess management is done by Jill, Vito and Kristi Virtus. Our content writer is Carlisa Galbrith, our graphic designer's Yuravish Savalia. And I'm your host and executive producer, Donald C. Kelly. (upbeat music)