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3 Great End-of-Year Strategies to Help You Reach Your Sales Goals

Sales

How do your sales numbers look this year? Are you starting to scramble because you might not make your sales goals?

There still is time to reach your goals as the year-end approaches. While you don’t have a lot of time to close new business, you certainly can implement a few strategies to increase the probability of more business ending up on the books for this year instead of next.

You already know your best customers.

You may be looking to close new business, but new business might take longer to sell. Instead, why not look at your existing business to make more sales? Review your customer purchases and look for gaps in products they could be buying from you. Ask yourself, is every one of my customers buying everything they could be buying from me? The answer may surprise you.

You may think your customers know all the products you sell. They don’t. If you simply ask the question, “Are you buying all the products you could be buying from me?” you are asking your customers to know all the products you sell. They don't know this.

Your job as you meet with every customer is to include a discussion of all the products you sell to determine if, in fact, they use those products. Group your products into categories so you can clearly explain what you sell. Then describe the categories you sell to your customers. Ask if they use any of the products in any of those categories. For instance, if you sell insurance, there are many different types of insurance products. List all the product categories that you sell, from workers comp to E&O insurance. Then ask your prospects if they are buyers for any of the categories.

Your existing customers already know you and trust you; you’ve already set them up to buy from you so there won’t be any delays serving them. Your existing customers are the easiest prospects to quickly put more sales on the books now.

Check what you’re doing.

You may be wasting time on prospects who are least likely to buy--and you don’t have that luxury. Now is the time to focus on the prospects that are most likely to close this year. You can determine which prospects to focus on with a quick analysis.

Do you know what your ideal prospect looks like? If not, now is the time to determine who your ideal prospect is. Do this by looking at your last 10 deals and whether you won or lost the sale. Next, develop some criteria to describe those deals. Criteria could be years in business, deal size, urban or rural location, with which department did you start the sale, and more.

Determine which criteria best describe the deals you have won according to the results you see. If you see that most of your sales are with young businesses, years in business would be a characteristic of your ideal prospect. Do you do better when you start selling in operations versus purchasing? The entry point of operations becomes a characteristic of your ideal prospect.

Now look at the prospects who haven’t closed. Which ones most closely resemble your ideal prospect? Start working exclusively with them in the time you have left this year.

Never beg unless you need the sale.

Begging is a sales strategy, but it’s not what you think. It’s not like I'm suggesting that you go up to a prospect you barely know and beg for business; what I'm saying is you are going ask someone you know for business.

I've used this strategy when asking customers to place an extra order to help me meet a sales goal. If you only need a few more orders to reach a sales goal, ask your customers if they'd be willing to help you out. Most satisfied customers would be happy to help you if you’ve done your job of helping them with their businesses.

December 31st is right around the corner. Doing nothing to inject some life into your sales is not an option. Now is the time to try something different to get the sales you need.

Profile: Maura Schreier-Fleming

Maura Schreier-Fleming is president of Best@Selling, a sales training and sales consulting company. She works with business and sales professionals to increase sales and earn larger profits. She is the author of Real-World Selling for Out-of-this-World Results and Monday Morning Sales Tips. Maura focuses on sales strategies and tactics that lead to better sales results. Maura is a sales expert for WomenSalesPros. She is part of their group of top sales experts who inspire, educate, and develop salespeople and sales teams.She speaks internationally on influence, selling skills, and strategic selling at trade association and sales meetings, demonstrating how her principles can be applied to get results. She successfully worked for over 20 years in the male-dominated oil industry with two major corporations, beginning at Mobil Oil and ending at Chevron Corp. She was Mobil Oil’s first female lubrication engineer in the U.S. and was one of Chevron’s top five salespeople in the U.S. having sold over $9 million annually. Maura writes several columns to share her sales philosophies. She's been quoted in the New York Times, Selling Power, and Entrepreneur.