INTRODUCTION

A Better Way: A Nonstop Sales Boom

Most sales organizations are far too familiar with the following scenario: As the end of the quarter approaches, team members are frenetically working to close deals. Some will close those deals and some won’t. At the end of the quarter some salespeople have made their target, some haven’t. And at the start of that next quarter, almost all of them—those who didn’t meet their targets and those who did—will be facing insufficient pipelines and spend the next weeks chasing new leads that may or may not close in time.

Feast or famine, boom or bust, apex or nadir—it’s a pattern that too many sales organizations regard as a necessary evil. I don’t. I see it simply as an evil. This is what compelled me to write Nonstop Sales Boom.

Sadly, all too often when teams perform well in one quarter they are more likely to see results collapse in the next. Why? In the all-consuming rush to close deals at the end of the quarter or year, key activities fall by the wayside. And when activities like lead qualification and account management suffer, the seeds are sown for bad results down the line—in effect, creating a self-imposed vicious cycle where results vary significantly from quarter to quarter.

For sales leaders, this boom and bust cycle creates enormous uncertainty and inconsistency. Yet it’s considered “normal.” Do any of the following statements sound familiar?

   “We always have inconsistent results because our buyers don’t buy in the first month of the quarter!”

   “I expect fluctuating individual sales performance! They can’t be perfect all the time. If they were, that would show that our targets are too low.”

   “It’s okay to have a few on the team who underperform. They are balanced out by the overperformers.”

   “I’m just in a slump. I’ll get over it soon.”

   “Our business is always seasonal.”

   “It’s just the typical hockey stick!”

   “It’s always been this way. Nothing we can do will change it now.”

These are the justifications of poor sales management. And reasons why you should read this book carefully!

However hard you try to justify it, boom–bust revenue production is indicative of a much larger problem: a nonstrategic, boom–bust mentality that somehow manages to adhere like glue to the brains of sales management. I know that sales reliability is highly sought in sales organizations and that reliability continues to be an elusive goal. I also know that the process of chasing it down leaves sales executives (who are dealing with end-of-quarter stress) and individual salespeople (who are trying to establish consistency) completely devoid of the energy they need to do their jobs. A sales vice president I spoke with recently told me sales reliability was also the cause of her gray hair!

While extensive improvement work has been done by experts and well-intentioned companies in specific tactical parts of the sales process, such as cold calling, prospecting, and presenting, never before has a focus been placed on the specific causes of and cures for the roller-coaster boom–bust cycle that most sales organizations endure.

Until now.

Welcome to Nonstop Sales Boom. In this book, I will challenge you to reject the typical boom and bust sales cycle where results lurch between highs and lows and the end of each quarter is a mad scramble. Instead, you’ll learn the strategies and tactics for creating your own perpetual sales growth quarter after quarter, year after year.

At the heart of these strategies and tactics is a new framework called the Sales Radar™ that replaces the step-by-step mindset of traditional sales with a holistic, constantly spinning assessment of all the opportunities for sales that surround you. The Sales Radar mindset is not just focused on attracting prospects and closing sales, but also explores the myriad opportunities with and through current customers—from the leads and sales that arise during the implementation or participation phase, to bigger sales to current customers looking to grow their engagement with your company, to the leads to new, qualified prospects from satisfied customers whose enthusiastic advocacy can be leveraged into sales to new clients.

In the pages that follow, you’ll learn in detail how the four states of engagement of your Sales Radar—Attraction, Participation, Growth, and Leverage—break the boom and bust sales cycle and instead lead your company to a Nonstop Sales Boom.

I’m sure that some of the stories of success and failure that you’ll read in this book may appear to be taken from your own operation. Don’t worry, it’s not just you. Many sales teams and organizations have been drawn into these never-ending highs and lows. It’s time to end the cycle.