A Letter to Sales Leaders About to Miss the Annual Plan: Take Advantage of Q4’s Hidden Runway

Here we are, Q4.  The grand finale for both purveyors of technology and their buyers.  End of year budgets must be spent, and sales plans launched in January are ripe for harvest.  Even your favorite experts agree.  Early in the year they released their outlook reports for 2017, stating that “Yup, companies are going to spend a lot on technology.”  Now is the time.  I can’t tell you who trained who to operate this way; the buyer or the seller, but this is a phenomenon that is deeply ingrained in B2B life.  Yet there is another dynamic at work in Q4, one less well understood: the Q4 Runway.  In short, for sales leaders who are about to miss the annual plan, the fourth quarter provides silent avenues for a strong launch into 2018.
 
For a bunch of you, this holiday season is going to be awesome.  Nothing like a commission check so large it feels like a dump truck should be delivering it.  But there’s another group (and you know it now) who will be polishing resumés in a few weeks.  In short, this wasn’t your year.  What went wrong?  You probably already know but if you don’t, you’ll soon have plenty of time on your hands to figure it out.

And for the Sales Leader? 

For the sales leader, the dynamics are a tad different.  Call them the VP of Sales, VP of Revenue, Chief Revenue Officer, even the CEO; it’s the person on the hook for delivering the whole number.  At least 40% of them fail to hit plan each year.  Sometime in August or September (hopefully earlier) they started to see the writing on the wall.  “The plan is not working; current trajectory says we are going to fail”.  The implications are manifest, everything from hiring plans, new product development, current headcount and shareholder value are at stake.

Not to worry, the sales leader is the leader precisely because they’ve done this before. Instead of panicking, they put together a gap plan with scenarios A, B & C to cover the hole.  You know the rest: for some, these plans will work out and for others…it won’t.

Immediate Actions to Avoid a Repeat
 
For sales leaders who know this year will not be one to remember, Q4 poses its own set of opportunities for course correction.  To be blunt, the plan didn’t materialize, so take advantage of the hidden runways in Q4 to make sure you launch the team into 2018 prepared to take down the year.  Here’s a few steps I’d recommend to any sales leader looking to avoid a repeat:

1. Keep your job.  It’s November, so the year is broken but Q4 isn’t.  Hit the number for the quarter, beat Q4 last year, or build as much pipe as possible (don’t fluff here, you know better), but make sure you have something quantifiable to point to and keep your job.
2. Diagnose what went wrong.  Invest the time, pour through the data (you do that regularly anyway, right?) and get to root cause.  In most cases, the answer is right in front of you: Sales Execution.  Maybe there are competitive dynamics at play, but I’ll put it another way: if each quota carrying person in your org closed one more deal at your average selling price (no miracles here) would you be in this difficult spot?  Probably not.  Did the highly compensated sales team lose deals due to flubbing basic blocking and tackling?  Probably yes.  “Frustrating” doesn’t come close to adequately describing how the sales leader feels when this is revealed and accepted.
3. Hire Now.  I know it sounds strange.  How can a sales leader hire if they are about to miss the number?  Well, it happens.  If there is an open headcount, fill it and make use of these months to get them productive for Q1.  Think of it as bonus time.
4. Take Advantage of Force Multipliers.  Like it or not, the sales leader will be faced with articulating a turnaround story.  To that end, put in place the right support systems for hiring, ramping, and upping the team’s overall game.  Do it now.  With access to the right expertise (subtle note here, the sales leader knows the what and how of what needs to be done, but they might not have at their disposal the extra brain trust with the right experience to make an impact right away) a sales leader can make sure reps will be easier to hire, more productive faster, and receive consistent reinforcement about proper selling discipline to increase close percentage.  A little investment in this area will help a struggling team develop into a much more effective unit and punch well above its weight; that’s why it’s a force multiplier.

Does this all sound simplistic and overly obvious?  If so, that’s because it is.  No rocket science or brain surgery here; this is day one stuff.  But if it is so obvious, then why are so many sales leaders in this position right now, in November 2017?
​ 
Take advantage of the hidden ramps in Q4, launch into 2018 and make sure you don’t end up in this spot again.