Maximizing Year-End—Making the Most of the Time That’s Left

By Steve Jensen

3 min read

It’s that time of year when things slow down a bit, and people turn their attention to their friends and all the things the Holiday season brings. It isn’t just that the temperature gets colder and it gets darker a little earlier. Holiday time can be a frustrating, cold and dark time for sales leaders and salespeople in a lot of different ways. As a sales leader, these last few weeks of the year are important. The push for a killer Q4 is not over and while there are still deals to win, your customers and prospects will be looking to next year in many cases. So, how do you make the most of the time that’s left?

If you are committed to working the week between the Christmas and New Year’s Holidays, what can you do to make it effective?

How to Maximize the Last 2 Weeks of December

Create leverage into 2020 with the final weeks of 2019. According to Marketplace, only 18 percent of people plan to work that entire week. While most are packing things in until next year, here are a few things you can do to make the last 2 weeks of 2019 count.

Win What’s Winnable

Unless you are in a really transactional business with short sales cycles, if you don’t have a commitment from your prospect or customers to get something done by year-end, you may have a tough time getting people to respond to you. I’ve seen some people respond to aggressive discounting or threats of possible price increases, but for the most part, I don’t like those strategies. They don’t build trust with clients or prospects and I have seen them backfire. Instead, here are 3 things we’ve seen to be helpful in getting deals done before the ball drops in Times Square:

Mutual Close Plan: If you haven’t done so already, a mutual close plan is a good move to make sure your prospects and customers that have committed are working toward a mutually-agreed upon plan to get a deal done by year-end. I refer to the “Mutual Close Plan” as the “Pre-Contract Contract.” This creates urgency once your buyer has committed to the plan. A well-built close plan has things the buyer does and things the salesperson does. If you have a commitment to get a deal done by year-end but no mutual close plan, give this a shot. It is a great way to create buyer engagement.
Bump January Deals into December: Look to your reps’ January pipeline. Which deals are in place for the first half of the month? Here are 3 strategies I’ve seen have success in moving deals forward to close by year-end:
Ask for the Business. Reach out to these people with the question “Is there any way we can close this by year-end?” There are lots of reasons it is in a company’s interest to close early. Using the remaining 2019 budget is a great reason. I just sent off an invoice to a new customer today by having a conversation around 2020 success paid for with 2019 budget. IF you are close to closing, it is not unusual to be able to bump it up a week or two.
Buy Now, Pay Later. Another good strategy is “sign in December, pay in January.” Many January deals in my career have been moved into December with modified payment terms. If you’ve been in a sales cycle of any length, this is often a good way to move things forward. Many times, deals are just waiting on the budget to open up. Eliminate this concern. Let them pay with January dollars but get the “Closed Won” in place now.
Get off to a fast start in 2020. Sales cycle times are getting longer as more people are involved in purchase decisions. Your reps’ prospects want to buy your product in 2020 to help them solve specific problems or to achieve specific results. Have a conversation about the value of getting productive earlier. Signing now will save you the month of January in unnecessary waiting periods. By purchasing now, they can spend the end of December and the first week of January importing data, setting up users, creating workflows, and doing the setup/install-related tasks and get to utilization at least a month earlier. The value of a wasted month this close to the finish line is a meaningful business conversation.

Assess

This is the perfect time to look back at the year and take stock of what you have accomplished and of those things where you may have fallen short. Keep and enhance the things that worked and jettison those that didn’t. Recommit to the life and business that you want. This downtime will allow things to shake out that might go unnoticed during other, busier times. Win-Loss analysis is something only a few sales teams do. Look at the variance in your wins and your losses. Things like cycle time (start to close and time per stage), verifiers, number of activities, and high-value experiences created for the customer are great ways of seeing the difference between wins and losses. Use this to identify specific ways your team can to improve so you can turn more losses to wins and use these things as the basis for your 1:1 coaching sessions with your reps. The more you can understand why you win when you win and why you lose when you lose will make it much easier for your reps to intentionally improve earlier in 2020 and as a result, have the strongest year of their career.

Plan

Now is a perfect time to plan how you start Q1. A time-tested Sales Truth is “The Better you Start, the Better You’ll Finish.” How are you going to win the pursuits slated to close in January? Which target accounts are you planning to engage? Have you fully researched and created call plans for them? Do you have a well-planned engagement strategy? Don’t get to 2020 and just keep doing what you’ve always done. What is your plan to get x% better in 2020? What do you need to do more of? What do you need to do differently? Make this plan a part of your coaching conversations. Get their context around what they want to accomplish this year. You’ll do better if you do. But this is a time to get your ducks in a row for a year that you will be asked to do more than you did in 2019. Don’t wait till 2020 to start on your 2020 plan. Make sure you are ready when the opening bell sounds.

Salesforce Cleanup

Cleaning up your Salesforce records is something no rep likes to do. But this is a great time to work on these kinds of administrative tasks. Close dead deals. Get real deals current. Find stalled or neglected deals and create plans to breathe some life into them. You’ll be surprised how many opportunities you will find as you go through those records.

Build re-engagement strategies. Create referral plans. Remove opportunities that aren’t going anywhere. Get a real, meaningful view of what your team’s pipeline REALLY is. Start the year clean. Remove the fluff and make sure they are focused on building whatever pipeline they need in order to hit their 2020 goal.

Disconnect and Recharge

This Holiday time is the perfect opportunity to take a break and recharge your batteries for the battle to come. Disconnect for a few days. Visit friends and family. Take some time for yourself to ensure you are ready to go when things get hot again with the new year. Turn all your devices off. Once you get over the anxiety of wondering if you’ve missed anything you’ll be shocked just how great life can be away from the grind we all embrace as salespeople. Whether it’s a hobby or just something you enjoy doing, take some “me time” this holiday season. You’ll return refreshed and energized. Just one day off can make a huge difference.

Time is a Gift

Whether you work the week after Christmas or not, consider that time as a gift. Either way, it presents an uncommon opportunity to do those things that you can’t normally do. From everyone here at Xvoyant, Happy Holidays! Here’s wishing you a productive holiday and a happy and prosperous New Year. Happy selling!

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Steve Jensen is VP of Marketing at Xvoyant.