As the end of the year approaches, it is vital that all efforts are focused on closing business and opening new opportunities for 2018.
I have seen a variety of ways to do this, but in my opinion constant qualification of deals and asking yourself ‘is there anything else I can be doing?’ on a regular basis is key for accounts you are trying to close. In terms of opening new business get out to your network for 'Christmas Coffee', send physical cards and make the effort to get to Christmas edition events.
I’ve put together the template I use for qualification of deals with the column headings corresponding to the report within our CRM (Insightly). I am happy to help any readers with their own reporting.
You can download the form here.
I have included comments in severals columns that I think require an explanation. These also include brief tips. Happy to answer any further questions!
When completing the template you should fill in any unqualified fields with green. The objective is to turn each row to white. On turning the row to white it will be fully qualified and if not closed already, about to be close! This diagram provides a quick example:
This exercise also works well if you are trying to clean up your CRM data or look for gaps at organisation, opportunity or contact level.
I caveat this with a strong warning; management must be involved with their sales team, just talking and filling boxes will not get the deals closed. Leading by example and keeping the momentum is key. Inevitably the management will have experience and business contacts to assist but unless they understand each deal they cannot. In addition your management will be well positioned to spot themes across the team. Q4 should be like any time of the year and with the festive break it is a great opportunity to rally together as a team and finish with a success.
As the end of the year rapidly approaches, it’s hopefully a time of celebration for business leaders at growing startups. It can also be a time of high pressure, especially if you’re a new leader at one of the hundreds of companies that received seed funding this year who needs to report to investors on the year for the first time. Luckily, there are some seasonal sales tips for closing your year strong that hold true every Q4, and here they are for you:
