Welcome back from a long weekend, or in some cases a week’s vacation. After you clear your emails and catch up with your sales team, have you decided your priorities for the final weeks of the year?
Maybe it’s helping close that final contract, visiting a couple key accounts or sitting in on a year-end customer business review?
How does the sales team look heading into the next year? It is time to take final action on those C players who just didn’t get it done? Maybe you are ready to make offers to some new sales executives.
These last four weeks are a great time to do a detailed pipeline audit and remove any stalled decisions and those perpetual no-decisions that always seem to hang on. Double check that every remaining deal is in the correct stage. Having an accurate pipeline is always important, but particularly as you start a new year.
Reviewing sales process is also a worthwhile use of time at the end of the year. Sales effectiveness is more important than ever and tightly defined sales process helps improve effectiveness. Be sure to include lead generation in your sales process inspection.
Have you started planning your kick off meeting? Whether it’s a big formal meeting or just getting the team together in the office, these beginning of the year meetings are a great time to reinforce strategy, process, compensation and goals.
This has been a tough year for sales leaders and sales teams but resist the urge to let off the gas just yet. Now is the time to put those finishing touches on the past twelve months while taking the first steps to a strong start in the new year.