Good Morning & Merry Christmas!
First, and most importantly, I along with my Christmas friends here just want to wish everyone who tolerates me in my weekly outreaches from my work in Boston, my NH beach, my roots in VT and, of course, my beloved Tufts, a very, warm and wonderful Christmas and holiday break!
Enjoy, relax and take a walk in the woods or on the beach while you hug your family and thank them and yourself for whatever has occurred in your life and your business this past year!
Just a few thoughts this AM about putting points on the board in the last 3 or 4 selling days of 2021. I don't know about you, but I have yet to find anyone who is planning on working during the week between Christmas and New Year. It's been a tumultuous and hectic year, and everyone is ready for a well-deserved break, and that's happening beginning on the 23rd.
Everything comes down to being measured!
Whether you're looking at quota achievement for this year of 110%, or you're behind the curve, maximize every hour you can from this morning through next Wednesday. All of us can work an extra couple of hours now at crunch time including time spent this weekend to prep for Monday's and Tuesday's rush.
- Quota scores for those of us who are salespeople are as critically important as GPAs are when that college senior is looking for their first job or applying to grad or law school. In a world where the majority of resumes for mid-market companies and enterprise corporations are initially machine-read, you would be very surprised to find out where the cutoff numbers are. Certainly, one of the questions I am going to ask during the latter part of my initial interview with any salesperson is to present their quota attainment against their original sales plan for the previous six quarters.
- I know numbers of salespeople and managers who have never missed a quarterly quota...ever! More important than the money that comes with that success is the definition that that person is not only an extraordinary salesperson or sales manager, but that they're also a true business leader with major forward potential. Not surprisingly, more than 70% of the CEOs in the F500 companies came up the ranks through the profession of Sales.
- A couple of weeks ago, this blog focused on closing tactics. There are 38 different formal tactics of how to close a B2B order. All you want is to be perfectly practiced in using the one that is most comfortable and most expedient for you. If you missed that, click here for the blog, or you can click here, for the video and/or visit our Sales Solution Page at our site for a library of other critical sales skills that you might find to be solid refreshers during these next 3 days.
For me today is a very busy day so that I can clear the decks for a long weekend of grading end of the semester projects. In my teaching of Marketing and of Sales, I and 10 of my instructors, who are mostly my Tufts alums who are now managing marketing or sales organizations, provide exacting content within the context of real-life sales and marketing projects that are provided to us by a wide diversity of companies.
This semester we had 10 semester-long, complex projects between my Marketing and my Science of Sales courses. These projects ranged from a billion-dollar corporation launching a new product to a third-generation insurance broker needing to up their game in their website and internet marketing all developed around more precise persona identifications and their related value propositions.
With 40% of the semester's grade provided by the senior manager of the company, the rest of the grading comes down to my working through the research, the various reports, the pricing schemes, the expense structures and then the final 90-minute presentations. Always a very exciting, exhausting and sometimes a difficult process, but, like everything else in life, it always comes down to being measured.
AN ANYTIME SOUNDING BOARD
If at any time, you have a need for a confidential sounding board for your 2022 business or sales planning process, just connect with me! Text or email me, and I'll quickly set up a call. I'm a very good listener, and we can get deep into tactics if you want. Obviously, no cost for a call or two; just an opportunity to listen intently and make a few recommendations based on decades of experience.
Derby Entrepreneurship Center@Tufts.
