Tips for finishing 2017 Strong
Earlier this week I was being interviewed by a writer for an upcoming article and she asked me what advice would I give business leaders on how to end the year strong. Here are 3 tips we discussed:
1. Evaluate your 2017 Goals versus Results
Goal setting is an essential part of success. As a business leader, you should have started 2017 with written and shared goals for the company, along with short and long-term goals for each of the members of your sales team. Goals should be clear, shared and reviewed regularly. Look at the results to date and how they are trending towards the goal. If there is a gap from where you are and where you need to be an action plan must be created to close the gap. Each salesperson should know their personal gap and what they need to do to increase their activity to ensure they close the gap. If you are looking for stronger results in the last quarter to end the year strong, it often takes a different activity mix and commitment to get there.
2. Manage Behavior Not Results
Most organizations do a great job at focusing on the results they are looking for. Those results are what we call lagging indicators. Some examples would be revenue, profit, bookings etc. Lagging indicators are important however if they are missed it is too late to adjust. We can’t control results but we can control activity. Activity is based on leading indicators. Your sales organization should be run and managed against the leading indicators that drive results. Here are some examples: Prospecting attempts/dials, First Appointment Evers (FAE’s), Second Appointments, Referrals asked for and Networking events attended. These are the behaviors and activities necessary for any salesperson to drive results. Salespeople should have a goal for each of these activities. As business leaders, you should be managing and holding your people accountable to doing the behavior and the results will come.
3. Celebrate Success
We celebrate people on numerous occasions: birthdays, weddings, baby showers and so much more. But do you remember to take the time to celebrate your hard-working team? To commend their efforts towards achieving milestones? A company’s greatest asset is its people. Celebrating success and giving recognition helps maintain a culture of motivation, unity, satisfaction, and engagement – and engaged employees are more loyal and hard-working than their disengaged counterparts. Rewards and celebrations don’t have to be elaborate. Here are a few simple ideas that can go a long way in recognizing your team: Acknowledge success publicly at the start of a meeting, remember to say thank you, write a handwritten thank you note, bring in lunch or take the team out for a few drinks after work, use small gift cards to say thank you, create a public brag board that you and the team can acknowledge each other, extra time off or a fun teambuilding outing.
As you look at the last 3 months of 2017 look at it as an opportunity to finish the year stronger than you started.
If you are looking for more ideas on how to finish the year strong and position 2018 to be your best year ever join us on October 18th as we talk with WJR’s Paul W Smith and other local business leaders about Building a Winning Culture To Increase Sales Performance. Click for more details.