27 more selling days left in the year assumes that you (and more importantly, your prospects) are working this Wednesday, December 23rd and all 5 of the days between Christmas and New Year’s. The probability is pretty low that this is going to be the case, but days are days. The other issue that you need to consider in creating your own personal selling and closing calender between now and the rest of the year is that many of those days you define are not going to be fully available given the time of year with budget meetings and the end-of-the-year crunch.

All of the more reason to perfect your selling tools, and one of the best that we’ve found is the ROI calculator. In almost any company today, the Finance department is going to be involved to some degree in any prospective purchase above $25K. Even if the departmental manager has had their budget “approved” at some time, the actual purchase is going to involve a number of signatures, and one of those is going to be someone from Finance.

Given that, it’s your job to be proactive, and meet your prospect more than halfway across the table with an ROI that uses their numbers, their assumptions, and their metrics for success. One of the best tactics that we would recommend is taking all of what you’ve learned about your prospect and this specific need to your own Controller and have them help you through both the calculation and your presentation. Once you have that done, go over the results with your Champion for their guidance before you meet with their Finance manager.

Good selling today !  More tomorrow…

Jack