Don't Waste the Last Week of the Month

It’s the Last Week of the Month (LWOM). We only get 12 of these a year.

You have, at most, 5 business days left to hit your revenue number. Are you panicking?

I know how it was stressful for me. Every month.

Once the team grew larger than 10 people, it was difficult to influence every deal the way that I wanted. The pipeline was bigger. There were too many customer calls to jump on. There were so many details that I couldn’t keep up with what was important in each deal.

Turns out I wasn’t alone. This happens to every founder or sales leader that is scaling their revenue team. It just took me a while before I learned how to harness the energy from the LWOM and use it to my advantage.

Let me show you how to drive your team to 100% of goal in the LWOM.

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Manufacturing Outcomes

The revenue leader’s job is to manufacture outcomes for the business. And by “outcomes” I mean closing more customers and growing revenue for the business.

If the founder doesn’t have an executive sales leader yet, then the founder is responsible for manufacturing outcomes.

There are many other important responsibilities for the revenue leader like strategic planning, aligning with marketing, building processes, and all the other “executive-level” priorities.

Everything else is secondary to driving more revenue for the business. The only thing that matters in the LWOM is getting more revenue.

When it’s the LWOM, do not take your eye off the goal. Everything on your calendar must be aligned for closing business. Cancel all meetings that are not supporting your team to hit the number.

The only thing you will be focused on during this week is getting your team to 100%. That’s the job.

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Elevate Ordinary Experiences

Successful sales execution is surprisingly mundane. The whole thing is predicated on the following formula:

[consistent effort] x [consistent messaging] x [consistent lead quality] = [consistent results]

To get your desired outcome, you need to put the same amount of effort with the same messaging to the same types of leads. If you do this, you will get consistent results. If you want to increase output, increase one of these variables.

When you are doing the same thing over and over again with the same types of customers, you need to create ways to make it exciting. Viewed through this lens, the LWOM is a gift. It is a reason to make an otherwise ordinary week an “event”.

You are already using quotas and revenue targets to create stakes for the business and establish a sense of urgency. The LWOM is set up perfectly to make the stakes real and celebrate progress toward your goal.

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Here’s how to elevate LWOM to make it special:

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1. Increase the energy on the sales floor
   The team should feel the energy of LWOM. Start each day with a standup and talk through the wins from the day before. Turn up the music volume, the rep who closed the most recent deal gets to DJ.
   
   Bring breakfast tacos or donuts to kick off the day. Buy dinner for reps who want to grind into the evening.
   
   (this can be more challenging for remote teams, but there are ways to increase energy for the sales team no matter where the team is located)
   
   
2. Make the goal public
   Everyone wants to feel like they are contributing, so show each person on the team how they contribute.
   
   Each person on the team should know exactly what their personal gap to quota is. They should see the team’s gap to revenue plan so that they can understand their personal impact on the outcome.
   
   

3. Celebrate the wins
   Every deal that comes in should be posted in slack and celebrated. Hit the gong, take 5 minutes to talk about the customer, where the deal was sourced, and how you got the deal over the line.
   
   When a rep closes a customer and puts themselves over quota, MAKE IT A BIG DEAL.
   
   For SDR teams, celebrate the same-day demos and meetings that are booked with urgency.

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4. Get granular
   The revenue leader needs to be seen on the sales floor. The team wants to know that you are in the trenches with them.
   
   Get into the pipeline, understand the path to plan at a deal-by-deal level. Get your hands dirty by jumping on customer calls. Get involved in negotiations.
   
   Work through redlines with the enterprise customers. Back-channel support with the customer to make sure the deal closes.

Executives have more influence on pipeline deals than you might think. You just have to work the deals with your team. More on that below.

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Work the Deals

The revenue leader’s job is to manufacture outcomes for the business. The way to manufacture outcomes is by reinforcing the fundamentals of your sales process and getting granular into the pipeline on a deal-by-deal basis.

To get granular, you need to start with the goal (your revenue plan) and take stock of where your team is today (your team pacing). From there, you can build a plan for how you get to your goal.

I like to use simple spreadsheets to manage team pacing and the team forecast: You can download my templates here.

Team Pacing

Throughout the month, you should be tracking each team members’ quota attainment, team-wide quota attainment, and gap to plan. I recommend putting this in a shared excel or Google sheet that sales managers (or reps) can use to track their own performance.

Sure, you can run this report in Salesforce, but people tend to ignore things that are automated. When you require each person on your team to look at their performance in relation to the rest of the team’s performance, they internalize the number. They are forced to evaluate their own performance for the period. This creates buy-in.

Weekly Forecasting‍

Each week, the team should come together to forecast how they will produce in the period. Prior to this meeting, each rep and manager reviews pipeline to get two numbers.

1. Commit - this is the sum of all deals that are expected to close in the period

2. Best Case - this is the sum of all Commit deals + all deals that have a chance of closing in the period.

During the LWOM, the revenue leader should go through every late-stage deal in the pipeline and look for opportunities to pull deals into the period.

Ask the rep (and manager) these about the deal:

- who is the champion? Have we confirmed the champion?

- what is the next step in this deal? Is the next step on the calendar with the customer?

- do we have a time-based incentive aligned with our closing plan?

And here is the most important question:

Does the customer know that we are trying to get the deal done this week?

You will learn a ton by probing the team about individual deals. You will find deals that need to be pushed. You will find that sales reps are assuming deals will close without evidence that they will close. This is where revenue leaders can influence the pipeline

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‍Get started today

The first time you run this LWOM process will be clunky or awkward. That’s OK. Your team will become accustomed to it and they will look forward to the energy and the discipline.

The most important thing to remember is that it is your job to manufacture outcomes for the business, and the only way to manufacture outcomes is by getting granular in the pipeline and helping customers buy your product or service.

Your team will love to see you helping them close customers. They will respect your effort even if you can’t deliver the elusive executive magic that makes customers buy. The effort and the work are what’s motivating the team and the wins keep coming when you are focused on fundamentals.

This is how revenue leaders manufacture outcomes for the business.

As you grind through the last 5 days of the month, remember to enjoy it. We only get 12 of these a year!