September Sales: How to Hit Your EOY Numbers Before Time Runs Out

Dec 13, 2021

For the sales professionals who established goals at the beginning of the year, we now have just four months remaining to meet our original goals. In sales, September is the best month to close deals, particularly in commercial real estate when businesses are looking to move offices before the end of the year.

If you work for a larger corporate firm, you are certainly on a sales goal plan. If you are an independent salesperson, you either created a plan or you didn’t. Either way, all salespeople have a number in mind at the beginning of the year that they are expecting to hit.

Review Your Plan

This month, you need to look at your business plan and analyze where you are at. Are you at, above, or below your goal? If you have not met your goal, do you have enough in the business pipeline until the end the year to hit your goal? If you are below your goal, how far below are you and what will it take in the next four months for you to make or exceed your goals?

When It’s Time to Reevaluate

If you are behind your goal by a fair amount, a full review of your business plan is in order. You will need to review what has worked thus far and what hasn’t.  If certain pillars of your business have worked, then what can you do to expand those efforts? Then, you need to review what hasn’t worked. It’s important to understand why production hasn’t occurred and then ask yourself how you can improve your activity in these pillars to generate deals. You may find that it’s best to concentrate on the pillars of business that are working or perhaps look into new avenues to develop business.

If the decision is to look at new ways to do business, the best next step is to study other salespeople that work those new pillars to see how they make it successful.

Room for Improvement

Finally, you need to access your daily time management activities. Are you properly organized each day? Are you organizing your day the night before? If not, you should start.  Planning the night before will give you a solid start to a new day. Plan who you are going to cold call and how you are going to secure new business that day or week.

Next, schedule in the time it will take each day for you to work on new business development. It’s very easy to work on existing business that could eat up most of your day, but it’s crucial to set aside time for new business for long term success.

Adequate salespeople like to work on existing business, but great salespeople know they must keep the pipeline filled at all times. Closing deals without a pipeline for future business is like starting all over again each time a deal is done. If you are not meeting your goals, you still have time to turn it around, but the clock is ticking!

Photo Credit: Thomas Hawk Flickr via Compfight cc

 

Written by: Hans Hansson

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