Finish strong or plan for next year – is it possible to do both well?
There is not a business manager anywhere who did
not come back into the office after labor day ready to exhort their
selling organizations to finish strong. Regardless of how far behind
(or ahead) of the number organizations may be for the year, there is
always a belief that it is possible to finish strong. Is there anything
that can really be done, except ranting like some kind of fire and
brimstone football coach? Maybe yes, but honestly - no.
The fate of the revenue target for
2005 was largely set in Q4 – 2004. And to make matters worse, for
businesses who are strategically challenged, the achieve-ability of
revenue numbers for 2006 are being decided today, as businesses push to
finish 2005. What does this mean?
Consider the basics.Your Product - Your Customer - Your Price
What is so wonderful and necessary about your product? Why should anyone care?
Does your marketing material tell this story in very clear, concise and easy
to digest way?
Are your sales people capable of telling the product story without props?
Are they believable and credible?
Would you buy from them?
If a business heads into a new year feeling queasy about any of
the above – well then, all the yelling and screaming in the 4th Quarter
will not help at all. Only a calm, clear-eyed assessment in preparation
for the new year will solve the problem. Intellectually, you probably
know this, but there is not enough time and resource to get to it – too
much to do to “finish the year strong” ie: paying the price for poor
planning from last year. Call it, the circle of life.
Customers are people who have paid you money in the past and (with good customer
management) will pay you money in the future.
Customers ARE NOT people who might pay you money at some point,
those are prospects. Understanding the difference is really important,
and often a real blind spot for sales and marketing organizations.
Customers often get taken for granted as we chase after to
allure of closing new prospects at the end of the year. Admit it, you
just might know someone who does that. Sales and Marketing always loves
to flash the “new customers acquired” chart. However it usually loses some luster when Finance pulls out the “customer erosion”
chart. Two sides - same coin. It is an old axiom for a reason - Your
customer is the other guys prospect - take really really good care of
the people who pay you money today.
By the way, how did you arrive at your pricing model? It is
amazing at how many companies kind of end up with “market” pricing
based upon the word of sales people desperately trying to hit quota.
Does your pricing reflect the value of your product?
Do you have trouble not falling to floor on a first call, or during that first
discussion with a prospect?
Every finance organization dreams the dream of volume pricing,
however has this been driven into the comp plans of sales and channels
or is it something to be saved for the day when the customers happen to
trip over it and want it retroactively applied to the previous year…
you know the drill.
There is always pressure to play with prices to “finish the year
strong.” This is no secret – so please don’'t have naive expectations
about selling patterns and margin protection. Plan for it, it will
happen in ’'06 - again.
However you can anticipate and protect your
profit – if you plan ahead.
Sure, you can beat the tar out of the selling and channel teams to
“finish strong”, but for the most part – by this point in the year
pipelines are set and the die is cast. However, your business doesn'’t
have to be at the complete mercy of huge slow moving tides such as the
economy or vague market conditions –
Finishing strong in Q4 of 2006 depends on what you do today to prepare.