A short podcast/video (Getting to Club) by Adam Kay explaining behavioral differences between top and poor SaaS salespeople, with emphasis on actions at quarter-end. Main claims: top salespeople proactively surface and mitigate risks (legal, security, procurement), explicitly ask what could derail a deal, and—when timing is tight—ask what conditions must be true to close within the target month; poorer performers avoid risk, rely on hope, and fail to adapt closing motions based on deal timing. The recording notes the date context (end of calendar Q3) and frames these as simple, learnable habits rather than innate traits.
Chapters
Welcome to another episode of the Getting to Club podcast. I saw a comment on LinkedIn this morning that inspired this episode or this video, and somebody said the contrast between the best salespeople and the worst salespeople becomes very clear at quarter end. And at the time of this recording, it is the end of the calendar Q3. It's September 13th. We've got about 17 days left before quarter end. And so I want to tell you what I've observed, observed what separates the best salespeople from the worst salespeople at quarter end. And you're going to realize as I go through some of these examples that it's actually not that hard to become one of the best salespeople, okay? It's simple behaviors, habits, and skills. It's not some foundational character trait that you were either born with or you weren't. So here's the first example. The best salespeople seek risk in their deals at the end of the quarter, okay? They actively seek it out. They confront it head on. The worst salespeople avoid risk at the end of the quarter. They pretend it's not there. They stick their head in the sand, okay? That's the first example. The best salespeople actively ask about things that would put the deal at risk, like legal review, security review, procurement processes. Even when the customer mentioned or did not mention, rather, that it's part of their buying process, the best salespeople are putting it on the customer's radar and saying things like, hey, when we talked about the path to getting this done from here, I didn't hear you talk about legal, or I didn't hear you talk about security or procurement or whatever. And then they ask about that, knowing that they are putting something in the customer's mind they may have not been considering before, which could actually put the timing for the deal at risk. But those things are going to pop up anyway, and it's better that they pop up right now and that we can tackle them while there's still some Runway before quarter end than them coming up three or five days before the end of the quarter and you realizing you're not going to be able to close that deal. Now, the worst salespeople, when it comes to that stuff, they hear what they want to hear. They ask their customer about the buying process. They didn't hear anything about legal security, procurement, nothing like that. They might suspect that that's often the case with their customers at the end of the quarter, and they're going to have to do that stuff, but they think they can sneak in under the radar and they're not going to do something as risky as call out that possibility. Now, it never works out for those Sal people, right? That stuff ends up biting them at the end of the quarter. It comes up the last few days and they took a commit deal that maybe could have been closable if they asked about those. Those things a few weeks before, and now it slips to the following quarter, okay? So that's the second thing that separates them. The best salespeople, when they've got a deal that is trending well, timing wise for quarter end, they ask questions like, it sounds like we're tracking well in terms of the timetable we're working on, but I have to ask what would derail us from here, okay? This is another example of them seeking risk so that they can mitigate that risk. And it also speaks to what your closing motion should feel like with deals that are tracking well with your commit deals, right? If you've already talked about timeline with your customer and they validated pretty well that you're on the right track to getting something done together on time. Your closing motion is about identifying, monitoring and mitigating any risk that comes up, okay? Because the deal's already on the right trajectory and you're basically, your job at this point is the deal is rollerblading down a mountain and you've got to find all the logs that are in the way in advance and remove those. Okay? That's what your closing motion should look like. Now, the worst salespeople, they don't ask that question. They just expect the contract to be signed. They go, well, we've talked about this before. Nothing could possibly change, right? Nothing ever happens or changes within the status of a deal. So they just send the contract and expect it to get signed. And sometimes that works out, sometimes it doesn't though, and they're using hope as a strategy, okay? On the other hand, the best salespeople, when they've got a deal that looks tight from a timing perspective, meaning it's possible to close this deal on time, but it's looking pretty tight and it's certainly not certain the customer has not confirmed or committed to getting it done on time, the best salespeople shoot their shot. They use some softening language and then they ask a question and it sounds like this, feel free to kick me in the teeth if I'm overstepping my boundaries with this question, but I have to ask what conditions would have to be true for us to move forward together within this month? Okay? That's what the best salespeople ask the worst salespeople. They don't do anything in that situation. Maybe they inappropriately pester their customer. But the another point of this is your closing motion for deals that are looking tight is very different than deals that are looking good. Right? We just talked about that a second ago. And your closing motion for deals that are looking tight is not to just mitigate risk. There's already risk. You know what the risk is. It is to identify the conditions that would have to be true for you to move forward on the timetable that you're trying to move forward on. And it's to ask about those conditions and then it's to manage the deal accordingly based on some of the answers you get. Those are some of the things that separate the best salespeople from the worst salespeople, especially at quarter end. Right. These behaviors become very stark and very contrasted at quarter end. And it's I don't want to say it's easy, but it's simple for you to start moving yourself from the things the worst salespeople do to the things the best salespeople do, particularly at quarter end. So I hope this episode was helpful. And if you're seeing this on social media or anything like that comment of other behaviors you see at quarter end that separate the best salespeople from the worst. And I will see you in the next episode.
