I was chatting with a friend and former colleague of mine. He’s still “in the game”. His company’s sales year runs through May 31st; just a few hours until “year-end”!
Year-end in the sales profession? Always a wild ride! It brings out many creative (and entertaining) ways sales people try to produce a sense of urgency to close that last-minute deal. I refer to it as performing “unnatural acts.” In the retail business the slogan is, “All items must go!” Laughably, that slogan applies to application software business, too.
Today the challenge is in the customers’ mind - it’s just May. That’s why my friend is working so hard to create urgency aka perform unnatural acts. However, even the ancients knew:
Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest do not happen at all.
Herodotus
When trying to close that last, year-end deal, what do sales people say when they don’t really have anything meaningful to say? “Hi Mr. Prospect. I’m just checking in…” Or, “Ms. Prospect, I’m following up…” “Checking in”; “Following up”; sounds like a peddler, yes? Jill Konrath in her book Selling to Big Companies © suggests salespeople avoid this technique:
Because peddlers can't be trusted, don't peddle! You hate doing it, and they hate hearing it.
Jill Konrath
Besides, when the customer is ready to buy they contact us. They don’t wait for us to “check in”.
The cadence and psychology around sales year-end has always intrigued me. At my last company (Oracle) our end-of-year was May 31st; ADP’s year-end was June 30th; other companies I’ve worked for it was December 31st. In literally every instance, that last month of the sales year always saw a huge uptick in sales - no matter what month of the year. Lots of unnatural acts being performed I guess. Truth be told, I performed many myself.
Customers usually think of “year-end” as… well … the end of the year; December 31st; New Year’s Eve. If that’s accurate, why do you suppose customers go along with transacting at a higher volume for salesperson’s sales year-end? I mean, what’s their “urgency” and where does it come from?
Could it be stress? Could “there” for the customer be an end to the rep’s unnatural acts trying to get their business?
Stress is caused by being "here" but wanting to be "there".
Eckhart Tolle
Yes, closing deals on or before the last day of the sale year
is stressful. That stress is felt by the sales rep. Their sales managers are carriers, too! For customers,
it’s just another day or in the case of my friend it’s just spring. Outside of farming, there’s no urgency in the
spring, is there?
I wonder (and occasionally laugh)… Is the year-end “sense of urgency” all in the sales reps’ mind? If so, how do these salespeople operate throughout the rest of the year? Maybe they’re thinking, “There’s plenty of time to sell my quota.” Is it only when there is no longer plenty of time that salespeople start to feel that sense of urgency? And said urgency often brings out said unnatural acts.
That’s the downside of a companies’ sales years. In the customers’ eye the “year-end’ part is fabricated. Worse - when a smart customer finds out it’s our year-end they can hold out their decision until they see the stress get to us. They wait for salespeople (or our sales managers) to perform unnatural acts.
GAP
When life gets tough we could get a helmet… or… we could leverage the peace and share the power of a positive perspective.
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