Back in Vermont for the long weekend and find myself-as usual-trying to balance my time with the seasonal rhythms of the long list of “Things to Do Before The Snow” hanging in the workshop with the necessity of taking quiet time to do real work that just can’t be squeezed into the frentic workweek. No complaints here since it is what it is, and, quite frankly, I enjoy the pace plus I have the privilige of working and playing in the mountains of Vermont and on the beach in NH. By the way, an interesting factoid is that Vermont used to be seaside property-500 million years ago-and the acclaimed Vermont marble is, in fact, created from miles of compacted seashells squeezed up from sea floor as the continents pushed toward one another over those millenia.
Seasonal rhythms define living comfortably in Vermont. With most of the leaves now gone as a result of the big storms last week, the pace actually picks up given that there’s only 4 to 6 weeks before the first major snows. Add to this seasonality to finish those long lists of projects, the flurry of phone calls that will take place over the next few weeks from the flatlanders who have not been at their ski houses since March. Old projects forgotten, new projects created and everything now being squeezed into the next few weeks…before the holidays.
This is exactly the same thought process in planning the balance of the year for your sales activities. Theres simply lots to do in a short number of fixed number of days with increasing pressures on you, your bosses, your customers and those new prospects that need your attention over the next 50 days befoe the end of the quarter.
The most successful salespeople and their managers during this time are always those individuals who understand this balance of the season. Not fall and winter, but the buying cycles of their customers and prospects matched with the selling cycles of their companies and balanced with the specific number of available days left in the season. In Vermont, everything is measured by when it snows, when the deep freeze sets into the ground and when spring comes. In our world of Sales and making sure that we always match our selling skills and abilities with our capacity, the measure is always quota and how one stacks up against the rest of the pack.
At this time of year, in the rhythm of business, selling successfully is all about balancing your skills against the numbers of minutes left on the clock. Those who are the most highly organized and the most detailed out in their sales plans will always win at this time of year. These are the same people who are going to take their average selling hours of 60, which is what we consider to be “normal pace” for a successful B2B salesperson and crank up it up to 80. They don’t worry about where they are going to find the time-they just do it. This is the time of the year that the balance bar needs to be aggressively tipped to business and away from your personal life and proactively managed rather than just waiting for the snow to come.
Good selling !
