Only sales and marketing teamwork and jumped-up lead generation can make it happen!“What I am offering you,” said Brian the new marketing manager to Sam the VP of Sales, “is to give you a golden chance to make your quotas for all of next year.” And he went silent, staring at the sales manager.
“Ok, I’ll bite,” said the sales manager, “Whatever you suggest can’t be any worse than what I experienced last year. We chased our tails all year long and barely made quota in eight out of twelve months. It was painful.”
With a smile and a conspiratorial voice, the marketing manager learned forward and said: “If you
want to make your numbers next year, we have to work together now to change the attitude in Sales, Marketing and Management. We have to generate extraordinary leads in Q4, and work the first quarter like the hounds of hell are after us.”
“I am going to give you the Golden Rule for making quota, and if we pull it off in Q1, life will be better in the succeeding quarters. The rule is: Make quota in Q1 and your chances of making quota in Q2 jump dramatically. Make the half and watch Q3 leap exponentially. Make Q3 and you can almost sleep through Q4 as you bring it home at the end of the year. But it all starts with the first month of the first quarter in the year.”
“Alright,” the sales manager said, “but tell me something I don’t know. It isn’t as if I haven’t tried to make quota in Q1. ”
“The something you don’t know,” the marketing manager said, “is that you can only do it with Markeing’s help and a change of work patterns in Q1. I will have to give you 30% more inquiries and qualified leads in the last quarter of this year to build momentum for Q1. And then three things are going to happen: you’ll have a better chance of making the last quarter of this year, plus Q1, and the pipeline will build for Q1 and beyond.”
“But there are some other things we’ll have to do to pull this off,” the marketing manager whispered. “After New Year’s Day, you have to hit the ground running, and I mean running hard, non-stop, all out. No time for planning meetings or vacations, and none of the feel-good-that-last-year-is-over-time-to-take-a-breather stuff. You cannot let up until Q2. Cancel vacations, cancel the big week-long sales meeting, and then push like you’ve never pushed before to make quota in the first month. While your competitors are taking a breather, you’ll be crushing them.
“When the first month of the first quarter is made, you have to push hard for the 2 nd month. Once that is in the bag, the 3rd month will take care of itself. When Q1 is a success, you’re on your way. This is all dependent on lead generation, 100% follow-up of all inquiries and leads, and how you coach and drive the sales team. They are tired of being losers; they’ll follow your lead.”
to do. Be open and get their buy-in, and I will do the same with Marketing, all of our agencies, and our lead generation sources. When our competitors are asleep after New Year’s, we’ll be hitting the ground January 2nd like marines taking a beachhead.”
The marketing manager needed the sales manager’s help in getting the lead generation dollars to make the 4th quarter and 1st quarter push. The sales manager bought in, lead generation jumped 30% in the last three months of the year and the first quarter of the following year.
To this day, Sam, the sales manager, smiles as he remembers beating the competitors to a pulp while they were getting a traditional slow start in January. By the time the competition came back from their national sales meetings at the end of January (or beginning of February), and their marketing departments finally started to get approved budgets for lead generation ramping in February, Sam was smiling all the way to the bank. He was 60-90 days ahead of them.
The formula:
- Big lead generation in Q4 and Q1: 30% higher than normal.
- 100% follow-up of all sales inquiries.
- No distracting sales meetings or vacations in Q1. Plenty of time for that later.
