The problem
I will start off with a rant.
I am really, really getting tired of the "hustle porn" approach to sales. You know what I mean -- aggressive sales leaders hyping up themselves and their success in video clips by bragging about working 18 hours a day, making 200 calls, traveling to fifty customers in a week. If you believe them, then if you aren't working yourself and your team at burn-out levels, then you don't deserve to be successful.
Sorry, but that is BS.
Yes, you have to work hard, and yes, sometimes the crunch hits and you have to scramble to get the deal done and the customer under contract. But make no mistake -- for every stressful crunch to hit that quarterly goal, there was an underlying problem: you are becoming dependent on being lucky over being sustainable. If your business relies on last-minute miracles to meet your sales goal, you are not hustling; you are failing to build the processes and infrastructure to grow your business quarter in and quarter out.
Does that mean that there should be no urgency to close the business? Absolutely not! Despite my best attempts in managing sales teams, there is always a crunch: clients end-game contracts to get better deals (we all know that the price isn't final until the quarter's end, right?), the boss pushes for some last-minute sales to avoid an awkward call with the board, and many sales people seem to thrive on a bit of pressure to get the deal closed. Yes, some of the crunch is sometimes inevitable, but it should be minimized and not a core plank of your sales strategy.
Replacing hustling with planning
If sales and sales growth are to be sustainable, then sales leaders must invest earlier in the process and set the stage for growth and goal attainment well before the deal closing. Instead of celebrating the "hustler," I believe we should celebrate the "planner." It's not as glamorous, nor do you get the same adrenaline high, but by spending the time up front to build the machinery of your sales process, you can enjoy those last-minute deals as a "bonus" on top of your sales plans and not just as a hail Mary to merely meet your goal.
Here are a few things I have learned along the way to make the transition from "hustler" to "planner:"
Know all of your numbers. Don't just know your quota and your QTD sales, know the underpinning and leading indicators. How many new opportunities do you need each month? How long (on average) does it take them to close? What are the leading indicators of a great quarter... or one that is at risk of falling short? No one wants to miss a target, so if you know 90-180 days ahead of time that there is risk, you can do a lot more to close the gap than if you rely on a last-minute crunch to get to the goal.
Reward forecast accuracy at the rep level. Clearly goal #1 is to meet/exceed sales targets. Right behind that goal, however, should be to accurately forecast where each month/quarter will land. Do you reward or recognize the reps who repeatedly deliver what they say, or do you celebrate the reps who bring in last-minute non-forecasted deals? I suggest that sales leaders recognize all reps who meet or exceed their quotas at the same time you recognize the stars who sold the most that period. In addition, praise the reps when they do an excellent job forecasting their sales. In one company, we even created a board to recognize the most accurate forecasters alongside the highest sales achievers.
Pipeline, pipeline, pipeline. There's an old saying out there that "if you focus on the pipeline, the sales will take care of themselves." That's a possible overstatement -- knowing how to move deals to close is very important as well -- but there's a kernel of wisdom there. A healthy pipeline gives you longer-term predictability and reduces the dependence on a few big wins to achieve your goal. If you are on a monthly cycle, try asking your sales managers to forecast 90 days out for new business and 180 days out for renewals (adjust accordingly based on your business model and sales cycle) and review their accuracy regularly. You won't be as precise in the out months, but you should be directionally accurate. Adjust your algorithms as you learn and reinforce that understanding your future sales is as important as achieving your sales goals.
Get your entire executive team involved. The more your entire leadership team understands how the sales machinery works, the better off and more sustainable you will be. Know your numbers and share them openly with your colleagues. Product and Technology should understand how product upgrades and their timing can impact sales and renewals. Finance should understand how accelerating or delaying new hires can impact future sales. Operations should understand how outages can hurt upcoming renewal rates. Everyone should understand how the sales and revenue forecast is generated so that the nonsensical battles around "sandbagging" and "stretch goals" can be skipped for meaningful and fact-based discussions about the revenue of the business.
I am not trying to take away the energy and the adrenaline rush of sales, but I am saying that an addiction to hustle can be a real problem for a growing business. It's simply not sustainable. Going deep on the process, building a transparent sales "machine," and emphasizing understanding the numbers as much as achieving them is how you build a real revenue function.
Maybe focusing on sustainability isn't the sexiest approach, but it will let you plan further ahead and sleep a little better that last week of the quarter.
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