Finish 2016 Strongly With These End Of Year Deal Strategies
The Advanced Selling Podcast is the world’s longest running audio show for sales professionals.
It’s hosted by veteran sales coaches Bill Caskey and Bryan Neal. The pair have a relaxed and whimsical style that’s always packed with rock solid, practical advice.
It is must-listen weekly content.
The end of the year is fast approaching. But there is still time to get deals done. So this week Bryan and Bill focused on End Of Year Deal Strategies. In other words, their essential advice on how to finish 2016 strongly.
So in our blog post this week we take each of Bill and Bryan’s end of year deal strategies and explain how to apply their advice using salesforce.
Here’s why you need to do this.
- The data you need to implement their deal tips and finish 2016 strongly is already in salesforce. Don’t waste time duplicating information by creating spreadsheets.
- Using salesforce makes your opportunities visible to your boss and / or peers. You’re going to need that visibility to follow Bill and Bryan’s advice properly.
- It’s easy to follow progress and track outcomes in salesforce. You’ll want to see just how effective you were in finishing the year with a bang.
So let’s get started with their end of year deal strategies and implementing them use good salesforce practice.
1. Be clear where you need to spend your time
Here’s Bill and Bryan’s first tip on end of year deal strategies.
“Be clear on where you need to spend your time”.
To do this, put all of your open deals into one of three categories. The categories reflect whether the deal can be closed before the end of the year.
Bill and Bryan recommend Green, Red and Yellow for the category names.
- Green deals. You’re confident these opportunities will close before the end of the year.
- Red deals. It’s unlikely these deals will close successfully this year.
- Yellow deals. These might close but you’re going to need to work hard on them.
“Take a long hard look at your open deals. Be brutally honest”, they recommend.
“One way is to walk through each deals with your boss or a peer. Get them to challenge you a little bit. Work hard to justify why each deal is in each segment”.
The natural reaction of most salespeople is to work on the green deals first, then yellow, then red argue Bill and Bryan.
But that’s a mistake.
The correct order is Yellow, Green then Red.
If you work the Yellow deals hard and in the right way then some of these deals will close successfully.
And if you’ve done your segmentation correctly then the Green deals will close successfully without too much effort.
It’s those middle deals – the ones that are currently 50:50 – that will determine how strongly you finish the year.
So you’ve got to be brutally honest about the segment into which each deal belongs. Get a colleague to help you – your boss or a peer. Ask them to challenge you on every deal. And then do the same for them.
To implement this end of year deal strategy in salesforce
It’s really easy. Here’s what your system administrator needs to do.
- Create a picklist with the values Red, Amber, Green.
- Fix the chart colors associated with each value (otherwise salesforce will assign colors randomly to each picklist value).
- Create a matrix report and dashboard chart.
If you want to be a bit fancier, then implement a color bar (or other visual graphic) to make it even easier on the eye.
Here’s what the dashboard chart and report looks like.
In our example we’ve grouped the report by week rather than month. That’s because there’s not much time to the end of the year. It’s imperative to focus week-by-week on the deals we plan to close successfully before the end of the year.
2. Plan how to get to where you want to be
Here’s the second end of year deal strategy from Bill and Bryan.
Create a plan for each opportunity you are going to work on.
The guys acknowledge that planning isn’t something that comes naturally to many salespeople!
“You don’t need to overdo it”, say Bill and Bryan. “A plan is a series of steps that the salesperson will execute between now and the end of the year”.
Taking care to rigorously review and categorize each opportunity is a key element of creating the deal-specific plan.
Identify all the stakeholders associated with the opportunity. Don’t snatch defeat from the jaws of victory at the last minute by failing to address the needs of one stakeholder.
To implement this end of year deal strategy in salesforce
- Contact Roles. Use the standard Contact Roles feature on Opportunities to associate everyone in the buying center with the opportunity. Specify the role each person. This really helps with thinking through the close plan for each deal.
- Create a text field for the plan. No need for anything fancy. Create a Text field on the Opportunity to store the details of the close plan for each deal.
Here’s how the opportunity might look.
The field ‘2016 Close Segment’ appears in the top left of the Deal Strategy section. Over to the right is an automated custom flag to make the segment easy-on-the-eye to spot.
In this example we have also included some key pipeline quality metrics. These provide valuable input that will influence our confidence that the deal can be closed successfully this year.
The Contact Roles are shown on the bottom of the opportunity. Tagging each person with their Role surfaces thinking and discussion about the influence of each Contact on the Opportunity. You can see in this example that we’ve even included one external consultant (John Bond) that is also playing a role on the Opportunity.
Alternatively read about more a more customized approach to key account management and creating customer-specific action plans.
Superb Pipeline Visibility and Sales
Performance Metrics from this free Dashboard.
3. Amp-up your calendar based language
Here’s deal strategy number three. Become very diligent about getting dates into the diary.
“If you agree to call someone next Friday then send the calendar invite in the meeting. Do it there and then.
Because otherwise, Friday comes around, there’s no agreed calendar invite, the call doesn’t happen and your follow-up has evaporated”, says Bill.
The days slip away quickly at this time of year.
At this time of year it’s imperative to get dates in the diary. Make dates explicit. In the meeting, send the invite. Be disciplined!
To implement this end of year deal strategy in salesforce
Let’s be honest. Most people use MS Outlook for diary management and calendar invites rather than salesforce. We don’t disagree with that approach.
So here’s a slight spin on Bill and Bryan’s advice.
You’re going to be busy. There are going to be many non-work demands on your time what with Christmas shopping, kids school performances, family gatherings and social commitments.
So it is imperative to keep track of what you have agreed and the tasks you need to do. Record these notes in salesforce using Activities. It’s the best way we know of keeping track of everything. And it will help you stick to the plan.
4. Agree Go / No Go dates
Bill and Bryan’s final tip is to agree a Go / No Go date with each prospect. They recommend December 16, for example.
This isn’t an agreement that the prospect will say ‘yes’ on this date. It’s a mutual agreement on the date by which both parties will agree whether they will work together on a close this year. You can even ask the question, “If you were me, would you forecast the deal to close one way or the other in December?”
On the Go / No Go date the prospect might agree that the deal will close in 2016. Or they may say it will never close successfully. Or that the decision can be postponed until the New Year.
Either way, it’s a way of bringing matters to a head at this time of year.
To implement this end of year deal strategy in salesforce
- Simply create a Go / No Go Date field on the Opportunity. You can see it on the left hand side of example screen shot earlier.
- Incorporate the Go / No Go Date into your deal-specific plan. There should be actions that lead up to the date, and a calendared meeting for the discussion on the day.
So good luck. Santa will be coming, but not just yet. Implement these end of year deal strategies in your sales team today and finish 2016 in stomping fashion!
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