As the year draws to a close, the pressure to meet and exceed revenue targets intensifies.
At GetAccept, we were keen to find out what – if anything – sales leaders do differently when it comes to closing strong in Q4.
Here’s what they told us.
1. Sort the wheat from the chaff by ruthlessly qualifying your leads
Qualifying the right deals is crucial for sales success because it significantly impacts conversion rates and resource efficiency. This applies throughout the year, but is especially important when striving to meet your Q4 targets.
When we spoke to Carl Carell, Co-founder and Chief Revenue Officer at GetAccept, he said, “One of the biggest mistakes people make is trying to win the wrong opportunities”.
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“It dilutes your efforts and has exponential effects. We only have so much time, and we must spend it it in the right places. The ability to understand which opportunities you should spend 80-90% of your time on is what’s going to bring you closer to your goals. We shouldn’t cheat ourselves by diluting our pipeline with bad opportunities.”
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This honesty when qualifying your leads isn’t just good for you. Laura Erdem, Sales Leader for Americas at Dreamdata, says that correctly qualifying your leads is good for your prospects, too.
Qualifying out what doesn’t work and in what does “is being helpful for your prospects and making sure they choose the right solution.” And where your solution isn’t the right fit for them, you’re going to avoid dealing with churn at a later stage too. It's a win-win for everyone involved.
Tip!Maybe you’ve heard about BANT (not to be confused with the Great British art of Banter), a lead qualification process that looks at the Budget, Authority, Need, and Timeline for each lead.
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2. Get your comms right to avoid being out of sight and out of mind
91% of sellers find it hard to get – and keep – their buyers’ engagement.
This is problematic given that knowing how to effectively communicate can be the difference between winning and losing deals – in both the long and the short term.
For Next One Technology’s Joakim Karlson, keeping in touch with your contacts wherever and whenever possible is the answer:
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“It’s about multichannel communication: mail, personal video snippets, phone calls, meeting online, meeting IRL. You want to ensure there’s always a next action planned – a call? A video snippet to clarify? An invitation to a webinar? An interesting article?”
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But staying engaged isn’t just about making sure your prospects and customers remember you. It also contributes to building better relationships and making sure you’re quickly attending to any needs or questions that arise.
Wilma Eriksson, Co-founder and CRO at Vloxq, agrees that reps should “be extremely responsive to what customers and sellers say to be able to support in the best possible way.”
Tip!90% of sales leaders plan to invest in tech and methodologies that will help their reps engage more effectively with leads and clients. And we might be a little bit biased, but we think a digital sales room is worthy of consideration here. You can create dynamic proposal documents and keep all communications with your contacts in one place. Send personalized videos, use the integrated chat function to quickly reply, and get notified when other stakeholders interact with your proposal documents. Check, check, check. ✅
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Create a GetAccept trial account and try our engagement features for free.
3. Get key stakeholder involvement ASAP
You’ve spent weeks engaging with a prospect who loves your Salesforce integration. There’s no question about the value it’ll bring to their role, and you’re certain that a deal is just a few days away.
But wait.
They’ve just heard back from their Salesforce Administrator, who says there’s no way your product is going to work with their setup. Cue disappointment. Cue frustration. Cue hours wasted on a deal that was never going to happen.
A recurring theme from the leaders we spoke to was getting key stakeholder involvement – fast.
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“If you don’t already have C and VP-level engagement in your deals, then you need to get it now. As selling teams, it’s imperative to ensure key stakeholder engagement as early as possible.”
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Alongside uncovering early on whether your offering is a good fit or not, getting their involvement quickly also helps you to influence the decision-making process and proactively address any objections that arise.
Tips!We asked our reps for their quick tips for getting KDM involvement quickly. Here’s what they shared:
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4. Be flexible and open to a change of approach
For Ali Khaleel, Head of Sales at GetAccept, teams who are able to flex their approach in Q4 are likely to see more success:
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“Teams must not only be pre-active but also agile in the way they approach the market as we get into Q4. In other words, the way you pitch your products/services may have to change and adapt significantly as you move through Q4 – and you/your team must be equipped to act quickly.” For Pernilla Chis, Head of Lead Gen at Exsitec Sverige, one tip for flexing towards the end of the year is to sell with referral sales:
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“Look around among your satisfied customers and get them to recommend and make an introduction to someone in their network who they think would be served by the same solution/product. Then you have a warm entry, a recommendation from someone, and with a little luck (they might have budget left for 2023), you close that deal quickly in Q4.”5. Sales 🤝 marketing alignment
Laura Erdem’s Top Tip Forever for reaching your revenue goals is establishing clear alignment with your marketing team. And she’s keen to stress that this doesn’t just apply at the end of the year:
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Then you need to think about how you can align with marketing to produce the content, ads, events, or whatever it is to target those opportunities. Buyers want to meet you at their premises, which is your marketing and the places where they find you.”
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“For me, the key part is understanding and helping marketing to target the account that you’re working on or see as targets that you can close. Look at the data: What kind of accounts are we best at closing, such as big deal sizes or fast deals, and so on. Lewis Kemp, CEO at Lightbulb Media, also supports establishing a close sales-marketing collaboration as early as possible:
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“The funny thing about pipelines is that they dry up pretty fast when there isn’t a tap switched on at the top. The sales problem you have today is a marketing problem you had 6 months ago but didn’t address.” |
Frida Ahrenby, Chief Marketing Officer at GetAccept, writes: “Sales and marketing are in the boat together. There’s no doubt about it. When these two forces combine seamlessly, the result can be 🔥.” And the true payoff comes when you consistently and constantly nurture this relationship.
Tip!
Not sure where to get started when it comes to aligning your sales and marketing activities? Here are some tips from Laura:
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6. The art of staying present while looking forward
For Wilma Eriksson, it’s important that we don’t lose focus of the bigger picture while striving to reach our targets in Q4.
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“From my perspective, revenue teams are more process and long-term than hands-on here and now.” |
Pernilla Chis agrees, but adds that a lot is won if teams can keep two things in mind at the same time, prioritizing both the short-term and the long-term in December:
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Many miss that opportunity to give themselves the best conditions for Q1 because they’re too busy closing deals in Q4.”
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Ultimately, the consensus among the sales leaders we spoke to was that end-of-year success doesn’t happen in a vacuum. From working closely with marketing to bring in the right leads to building trust and good relationships, there’s rarely a quick-fix answer to meeting your targets. For the most part, it relies on consistent effort and smart processes from one quarter to the next.
So, on second thought, maybe we should consider renaming this article to Closing strong: Sales leaders’ tips for year-round success.
