How To Waste 9.5 Weeks of Every Quarter and Still Make Quota

Sales, like weight loss, is a lagging indicator.

If you want to hit your sales—or weight loss—target for Q1, you have to start doing the right things today.

There are 200 calories in a donut.

You must burn 3,500 calories to lose 1 lb, so skipping one donut a day for 90 days will save you 18,000 calories, or 5.14 lbs.

There are 140 calories in a Coke = 12,600 cal in 90 days = 3.6 lbs.

So, just by skipping one sugary snack and one sugary drink per day, you're 8.74 lbs closer to your 90-day goal.

If your sales numbers look like this:

• Close $1 million/mo = $3 mil/qtr

• Avg deal is $250k = 1 deal/week

• Close 50% of proposals = 2 proposals/week

• 50% of trials turn into a proposal = 4 trials/week

• 50% of qualified appointments turn into a trial = 8 qualified appointments/week

• 50% of conversations turn into an appointment = 16 conversations with buyers/week

• 10% of dials result in a conversation = 160 dials/week = 40 dials/day with one day for admin

• 5% of dials result in a conversation = 320 dials/week = 80 dials/day with one day for admin

You can manually make 35 dials in 90 min so you need 2 hours and 18 min to make 80 dials per day, four days per week.

You have 13 weeks in a quarter.

You have 52* prospecting days in a quarter.

*SIDEBAR: Strive to get your prospecting done in four days each week because shit happens. Don't plan for perfection. You'll get sick. Your spouse/child/dog will get sick. You'll get invited to play golf. You'll get burned out and just need a down day. There are holidays most months, etc.)

52 work days x 8 hours = 416 hours = 24,960 min = 1,664 sprints of 15 minutes.

In 15 min, you should be able to dial the phone nearly 6 times.

Set an alarm on your watch or phone or computer for 15 minutes and see how many dials you can make from a cold start right now.

With no planning, just logging into your CRM, scrolling and clicking around looking for a name, looking them up on LinkedIn, responding to two "important" emails and 10 "important" Slack messages and telling yourself some bullshit, I bet you make maybe two calls.

If you wait to do your prospecting until the "last minute," you'll need 17.33 days to have enough time just to make outbound calls at the end of the quarter.

So, on Thursday, March 7th, at 2:21 PM, you'll need to spend 2 hours 39 minutes dialing the phone non-stop, and then, on Friday, March 8th, spend all 8 hours non-stop, and repeat that the 11th-15th, 18th-22nd, 25th-29th, and all day on the 31st, and you'll make enough outbound dials to hit your number...

And if you can update your CRM…create your proposals…meet with your manager…get back to your co-workers before 8 am and after 5 pm during the week and your prospects can meet and do demos and negotiate and cut POs on Saturdays and Sundays, you'll hit your number by COB on 3/31.

Good luck with that.

Excelling at anything is not hard. It's usually boring, tedious, monotonous, grueling, thankless work over an extended period of time whereby you simply outlast your competitors and, through so much repetition, you eventually outperform newcomers as well, which helps you hold onto your crown.

This is the value of a coach/mentor/advisor/consultant.

We just keep you accountable to doing the little things over and over and over...and give you a little nudge...a little pick-me-up...and little pearl of wisdom when the moment is right...that launches you to the next level.

It's never something "new" because there's nothing new under the sun.

It's never something "massive," so I always say small hinges swing big doors.

It's just relevant information delivered at the moment of relevance.

That's how I help professional salespeople, sales managers, business owners, and entrepreneurs.

If you could benefit from that, let me know.

Market like you mean it. Now go sell something! 👍