With just about 15 selling days left in the year, closing deals now all comes down to the sales warriors who have the most energy, who are the best organized, who have the best value propositions and, most importantly, are the best closers. The pressure’s on, and everyone’s feeling it.
Tags: sales productivity, Sales Optimization, sales, sales management, sales management effectiveness, sales plan process, sales effectiveness, sales enablement, sales planning, sales tools, selling, improved sales management, sales management training, selling skills, closing sales, Sales quota, sales training
Heavy, frozen snow now blankets the woodlot. Thought that I would get one more trip into the woods to pick up the rest of the winter’s kindling, but the results of Wednesday’s 12 incher blocked my ATV right at the now impenetrable wall of snow pushed up by the plow guys. It’ll be that way now until spring unless it warms up, which given that it’s December, and this is Vermont, is highly unlikely. Just maybe, I might be able to convince my wife that a winter walk in the woods snapping off the dead lower branches would be “refreshing”. My guess is that the LP will see right through that suggestion. Otherwise it’s a trip to the hardware store to buy the more than expensive Georgia fatback pine kindling which works instantly, but sometimes I think that I might as well start the fire with dollar bills. It’s all part of the “joy” of heating by wood in the dead of a Vermont winter. Getting past my whining, all of this is good for my head and good for the exercise even though it does mean a bit of consistent thinking about the woodstove, keeping tabs on the woodpile on not letting up on banking the fire during the night.
Tags: sales productivity, sales, sales management, sales management effectiveness, sales plan process, sales effectiveness, sales enablement, selling, selling skills, sales training, sales plans
I was deep in my Vermont woodlot this past weekend picking up sticks. Low 30’s, crisp and eerily quiet. Not the smartest thing that I ever did considering Saturday was the start of deer hunting season, but details are details, and time is quickly running out. All it takes now is one deep snowstorm, and the kindling will continue to stay where it has rested all summer. Most of the wood tent has been filled by Tom the Wood Guy, but I still need to haul in a couple of cords I stacked in the woods last spring, and the weather looks like it will hold until Thanksgiving. Hopefully finish this coming weekend.
Tags: sales productivity, Sales Optimization, sales, sales management, sales management effectiveness, sales effectiveness, sales tools, selling, improved sales management, sales management training, selling skills, closing sales, marketing effectiveness, marketing productivity, Sales quota, sales training, leadership, marketing management
“Every morning in Africa a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning a lion wakes up. It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death. It doesn't matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle - when the sun comes up, you'd better be running.”
Tags: sales productivity, Sales Optimization, sales, sales management, sales management effectiveness, sales effectiveness, sales tools, selling, improved sales management, sales management training, selling skills, Sales quota, sales training
Monday was our second day without power, heat, running water and that most vital of all utilities, access to salesforce.com to check on my sales activities... Huddled around the fireplace with the consistent hiss of Coleman lanterns casting a yellow glow over the room, we toughed it out with only limited whining…mostly on my part. Every couple of years, since we live in Vermont and New Hampshire, we revisit what it’s like to endure these multi-day experiences without power, instant communication, and the basics of heat and plumbing. And the bottom line is that it’s a bit inconvenient for sure, but nothing like what my great-grandfather, Horace, growing up in Poultney, Vermont, must have experienced his entire life.
Tags: sales productivity, Sales Optimization, sales, sales management, sales management effectiveness, sales effectiveness, sales tools, selling, improved sales management, sales management training, selling skills, closing sales, Sales quota, sales training
It’s the Tween Season in Vermont. It’s neither foliage nor a lot of snow...yet, so it must be “‘tween huntin’ and winta’” With little this year in the way of foliage due to the wet summer and Irene, most of Vermont is now painted in various shades of just plain old dull brown. It’s that time of year that the highly celebrated natural beauty of Vermont becomes muted as every small community prepares itself for the coming of winter. It’s also that time of year when the hundreds of small contractors, which are the real backbone of Vermont’s economy, start feeling just a bit pressured when they receive those calls from their winter homeowner- customers asking how the new deck or the new kitchen cabinets look, when in fact, they still have the lumber in the back of their pickups.
Tags: sales productivity, Sales Optimization, sales, sales management, sales management effectiveness, sales effectiveness, sales tools, selling, improved sales management, sales management training, selling skills, marketing effectiveness, Sales quota, sales training, business coaching
With 50 days (which is being generous, so do your own math) left in the quarter, there's not much time for changing out teams, re-planning key account plans or totally new game plans. This is 50 days of classic blocking and tackling as you move down the field toward the goal line. Having said that, these last 50 days left in the season are also going to need to be played more like soccer than football. There’s no bye time like the Patriots have this week. There’s no ability to swap out teams and bring in other players. Clearly no time for time outs. This is just constant forward motion activity, yard by yard if not inch by inch, and all of that activity absolutely needs to be at full speed.
Tags: sales productivity, Sales Optimization, sales, sales management, sales management effectiveness, sales effectiveness, sales tools, selling, improved sales management, sales management training, selling skills, closing sales, sales training
Last weekend at this time found me in Vermont deep in shoveling the debris and dirt left from the floods and repairing the ATV trails in my woodlot. Filling one five gallon bucket at a time, hauling them to the tractor, driving into the woods and filling the holes in the trails, inches at a time, reminded me again of how lucky I am to have my day job which, although complex and pressure-driven, as my friend Bernie Gordon, CEO of Analogic, used to repeatedly tell me “doesn’t involve any heavy lifting.”
Tags: sales productivity, Sales Optimization, sales management, sales management effectiveness, sales effectiveness, sales tools, selling, improved sales management, selling skills, sales optomization, closing sales, Sales quota, sales training, sales optimication
I escaped from the end of the quarter Sales Crunch Time late last Friday, and went to Vermont this past weekend for the The Annual Fall Cleanup. It’s always a chore but also a relief to get through another summer season and start preparing for the winta'. It’s just a bit of disbelief that the summer came and went, and I only made it back to my home state of Vermont once, and that trip was with customers for an offsite. Those six generations who came before me were doing the proverbial rollover wondering what the heck happened to their Vermont son. But my addictions to the NH beach and now Stratton’s beckoning snowboard trails help me put everything into perspective. I just follow the seasons and the rhythm of our customer’s annual business calendars, and everything seems to fall neatly into place-very hectic and squeezed-but in place, all the same.
Tags: sales productivity, Sales Optimization, sales management, sales management effectiveness, sales effectiveness, sales tools, selling, improved sales management, sales management training, selling skills, Sales quota, sales training, business planning
Each of the three CEOs I met with on Monday used the same term, “crunch time” to describe the end of the quarter this Friday. A software company, a financial services firm and a retail product manufacturer-the industry didn’t make any difference; it was the same phrase, “crunch time”. Every month, every quarter, in almost every industry we work in, it always comes down to this last week. It is what it is, and it’s what we deal with as managers every year, which, of course, doesn’t make it right or wrong, it just brings too many decisions down to too little time leaving no room for errors. The bottom line of which, in any crunch situation, is that unfortunately something somewhere gets squeezed out and falls through the cracks. I guess I could paint an analogy to the Red Sox here, but that crunch time story is just too depressing and painful.
Tags: sales productivity, Sales Optimization, sales, sales management, sales management effectiveness, sales effectiveness, sales tools, selling, sales management training, selling skills, Sales quota, sales training
