There is little that marketers and sales people can do to change clocks or calendars. But oh my, do we ever try! We trot out all the usual enticements: price cuts, incentives, rebates, extended credit, and so on, especially at month’s or quarter’s end. The objective: to get the business quickly by convincing prospects and customers to leapfrog what they normally do.

It sometimes works in the consumer realm but not often in BtoB. The reason: important business decisions take time. Sometimes we can expedite the purchase order once the "yes" decision is made, but seldom can we compress the hours and days of the consideration process itself. So what to do?

Our guidance is for marketers to design campaigns and promotions based on reality, not on artificial time parameters. Make sure that end-dates provide adequate time for prospects' consideration processes. And we recommend sales management implement the "sales days left" strategy to promote continual closing throughout each reporting period. That is, if we have 62 selling days in a quarter, at day 31, a rep ought to be half way toward quota. Keep a tight rein on forecasts and monitor results, but do not try to force-fit customers' buying cycles to your reporting clocks and calendars.

Tonya Haynes

Chief Efficiency Officer, Phoenix Business Development Group

Posted on Feb. 22, 2012

With both sales objectives and goals, I break them down into pieces that can be measured, managed and tracked. For example if I know my break-even or goal is $6000 a month:
- $6000/mo = $1500/week
- $1500/week = $300/day
- $300/day = assuming I work 5 days a week = $37.50/hr

I create a strategy blueprint for achieving these goals as stated and a spreadsheet to track my results. I know if I make $0 the first week, I have to make $3000 in the 2nd week and so on...What I generally do is send out an advertising letting my network know that I am selling a $1000 product/service for $300, I will normally get 3 to 5 takers which takes care of week 1.

My spreadsheet tracks how far from the goal I am...in hours, dollars etc...if I find I am $1000 away, I have templates (excel), pre-designed documents (word) etc...that I normally sell for $250 that go on sale for $50 to $100 that go quickly and generally exceed my need.

Stuart Wright

Sales

Posted on Feb. 22, 2012

Check what you are measuring - what you measure you control. I find measuring orders is useless for productivity. You need to measure your actions that lead to getting an order. Stop measuring the orders and start measuring the pipeline stages. If you can action something right now to progress your pipeline then do it and keep doing it until you get more orders. If you've got a short-sales cycle you'll get orders quickly if your sales cycle is long then you've got hope for the future.

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