It’s an exciting time for many salespeople, thinking about the holidays ahead and a well-deserved break. It’s also an expensive time of the year and your bank balance is in direct proportion to the value you have brought to your market in 2017.
A big differentiator between top performers and others is that top performers have not mentally already closed their sales business down for 2017.
They understand that there are a few critical areas that will allow them to finish this year strong and get a kick start in 2018.
- Top performers have qualified all the opportunities in their sales pipeline and don’t live on hope. The number one question I hear salespeople asking their customers at this time of the year is; “When are you going on holiday and where are you going?” How about being as clear on the sales opportunity, why not ask them “Do they want to go ahead and if so, when?” Make a priority to clean up your sales pipeline now.
- Top performers diaries are full of qualified meetings for January. They understand that having a full January 2018 diary is critical to start the year on a high. Too often salespeople have empty January diaries and prospecting in January only leads to February meetings.
- Top performers finalise their personal sales goals and plan for 2018 before going on leave, poor performers wait for the company to give them their goal in 2018.
What blows me away is that so many salespeople spend way more time planning what they are going to do over the holidays and almost no time planning how they will achieve success for next year.
I don’t want this article to sound like “rant”, I’m passionate about salespeople achieving their potential and success. I’m passionate about continually elevating this great profession of sales and it’s what sales South Africa does every day that either makes it or breaks it.
Wishing you all an awesome break and planning to start 2018 on a sales high!
Yours in sales,
Mark Keating
