How to Beat Your Q4 Quota (Webinar Recap)

Badger Map's CEO, Steve Benson, joined Ringcental's Director of Sales Operations, Bill Dolby, in a webinar with KnowledgeTree. KnowledgeTree's Vice President of Marketing, Peter Mollins, asked the two sales veterans - "How do you beat your Q4 quota?"

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Hitting your sales quota, especially at the end of the year, is the biggest challenge in sales. Knowledgetree's webinar digs deep to discover the best ways to reach quota at the end of the year. Check out this blog to discover some of the best webinar platforms available to you.

Here's a recap of the best ways to sell more in Q4:

Close Existing Deals

Closing the deals currently in the pipeline is your fastest path to hitting quota. It's important to examine the various levers you can use to bring deals home.

• Open and honest conversation

Want to know a secret? Your customers love honest conversation. They hate feeling like their being sold to, but they love the buying process. If  they feel like they're apart of the process. One way to create customer loyalty is to level with them. Ask about their end-of-year budget. Will this deal close this quarter? If no, why not?

• Stay in discovery phase

Early in the sales cycle you want to learn as much as possible. Find value. Discover pain points. Get an idea of what their ideal solution looks like, and how you fit into that picture.

• Send quality content

Sending content at the right stage of the deal can be a sale-saver. During your initial contact with a prospect, send over some content explaining your value in their industry. If they don't feel like talking, they'll have something to refer to when it's decision making time. You can also send content that addresses pricing objections, putting the focus back on the value of what you sell.

Generate More Leads

Generating more leads is a natural way to increase sales. As you'll soon learn, leads come even easier at the end of the year.

• Take advantage of the shortened sales cycle

It's very possible to get and close a lead in December. Towards the end of the year, the sale cycle shortens dramatically as budgets demand to be used up. This makes your offer, if you position it right, a valuable end-of-year investment.

• Approach leads strategically

Your outbound leads require a different set of tactics than your inbound leads. If you approach your targeted leads strategically, they'll close much quicker.

• Make an agreement

A clever way of securing business it to make an agreement. Bring your buyers decision-making process to light, why hasn't this deal closed yet? If the answer is the typical "it isn't in the budget yet," offer a free or discount rate for the end of the year, then begin the year at a full contract. This ensures you land the deal and buys some goodwill as well.

Sell to Existing Customers

Your current customers are your best customers. Everyone who's bought from you has expressed a need for your service, making them as qualified as possible. Reach out and find opportunities to do more business with them.

• Find referrals

People buy from those they trust. If you have a great customer you've made happy, ask if there's anyone else who could use your services. More than likely they'll have some great opportunities for you. The best part about deals earned from referrals is that they require very little effort on your part, you profit by leveraging the relationships you already have.

• Find up-sells

Have you been up-selling lately? Introducing customers to the additional solutions you offer isn't just necessary, it's polite. Plenty of salespeople stop selling after their initial contact. This leaves a majority of your customers unaware that you offer other, more premium, products they would be interested in. If you aren't shy with your current business relationships you might find opportunity.

• Use a data-driven approach

Your CRM contains a wealth of data. You can, and should, use this data to find your best opportunities. It can be difficult to find that information in a CRM, which is why Badger Maps visualizes your CRM - allowing you to discover your best opportunities effortlessly. Using data to target your best customers is a sure-fire approach guaranteed to help you end the year on a high note.

Increase Efficiency & Productivity

Increasing your output is the absolute best solution, all year round. The fact is, high-performing reps always hit their quota. If you hustle, you will make it. That being said, there are some easy ways to increase your productivity at the end of the year in order to guarantee you hit your quota.

• Focus on actionable areas

Look at areas that can be immediately improved and target them first. What are your strengths? If you're great at closing leads, spend your time following-up and negotiating. You miss a ton of opportunities by not following-up with leads that fizzled out, now's the time to reactivate and close.

• Forecast effectively

Forecasting where a deal is going is a fast way to steer it in a desirable direction. What are your prospect's next steps? How do you fit in their overall plan? Understand their goal and make sure you're an essential part of it.

• Coach Your Team

At the end of the day, you only do as well as your team. Managing your team's success creates more results than you could drive on your own. If you're a sales leader, look for opportunities to coach. Effective coaching can increase rep performance by 5% each quarter, snowballing into extremely high productivity at the end of the year.

If you're interested in improving your performance in any quarter, sign up for a free trial of Badger Maps trial of Badger Maps - the leading solution in field sales.