Sales Prospecting Perspectives

Focusing Your Team To Deliver Success While Distractions Are High!

  

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Over the last couple of days my colleagues here at AG Salesworks have been discussing the holiday months and teleprospecting.  It is my turn today to give you my two cents on the holiday months (November/December) and some management tips aimed at keeping your team focused during this period. 

As we all know November and probably even more notably December the calendar gets very busy, there are parties to attend, vacations to factor in, shopping to get done, you name it and I can tell you that I have heard it from the folks on my team over the years. 

“Hey Matt, I was wondering if I could head out an hour early today to beat the traffic on my way to my parents house for a holiday dinner” or “I have 5 vacations day left and I can only carry over two so I am going to take them next week to get my shopping done”.

These are the types of things that come up as we look to close out the year. And on top that, there are the out of office events that people are excited to talk about whether it be the planning or even discussing how it all went with fellow co-workers afterwards.  These conversations are okay, but we need to remind our teams that we need to remain focused on the business of uncovering opportunities.

As Pete mentioned yesterday in his post - November/December: #3 and #4 Sales Productivity Months Of The Year, December tends to be the 3^rd most productive month but without your team focused on opportunity delivery this month can get away from you. 

I recommend a few things to keep your team focused:

• Outline the month for your team (# of business days, what days the holidays fall, time out of the office, etc.)
• Address the factors I mentioned above with your team and the impact they are going to have on the month (vacations, parties, etc.)
• Have individuals on your team plan their month and the time they will be out of the office so they can make-up this time accordingly (call #’s, etc)
• Create strategies to help the individuals on your team achieve success as target organizations plan and evaluate new technologies/services for the upcoming year (early entry can get you on the short list of vendors they are looking at)

But perhaps the simplest and most important thing you can do is offer constant reminders to your team and encourage them to stay focused, make dials and develop opportunities and deliver them to sales while they are in the office throughout December.

That is my “two cents” let me know what you think...