Art Brault and I have worked together in a couple of companies over the years, and now he's a Regional VP of Sales at Brainshark, a leading Sales Enablement company. Right now, Art's working hard, thinking through deals and bringing all of his considerable experience to bear pushing to make sure that his team makes quota for the quarter.
Art's a highly trained manager with solid experience, and when I visited him in his office last week, I was very pleased to see over on the right side of his whiteboard this simple metric of success for the balance of this quarter.
- 16 more days in the quarter.
- Trust in the process, the numbers, the metrics, and your tools
- Never allow the word, "hope", to enter into your vocabulary
Simple ideas...
- Unconditional focus on what counts most
- Believe in the numbers
- Believe in your process
- Understand that time is not elastic
As we move down through the next three weeks-15 more days to be exact-do an assessment with your team today as to how many of your deals yet to close this month are based on the strategy of hope?
- Be coldly objective
- Detail what's missing between where you are and closing
- Get out into the field starting this week and visit the prospects
- Identify what's missing
- Boldly sell the value you offer. Not you, not your company. It's the value.
- Close the deal.
Leave nothing to hope because "hope" will only become the reality of failure the closer you get to the end of June since everything begins to really slow down in July. And closing deals in August? Forget about hope, you better start praying.
Very simply-
...Hope is not a Strategy
...not this month
...not ever
Hope you had a great weekend. Now let's get out there and sell some stuff! 
Jack,
Head Coach
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