EVERY YEAR IN SALES EVER - HOW TO RUN YOUR YEAR INSTEAD OF REACTING TO IT

Hey, before we get into the interview, I want to make sure you're aware of the other podcasts I put out there. Sales Questions, Brutally Honest Answers. So, if you're looking for more of a daily Q&A, tips and tricks type of show, that's the show for you. Also, check out our friends over at brevitypitch.com. Brevity Pitch is an AI product that allows salespeople to practice their sales conversations without anybody eavesdropping. on you or judging you. It just lets you warm up and then develop your skills. Because we can think it, we can plan it, uh, but until we open our mouth and practice it, it's a different thing. It's like watching somebody play golf. You gotta play golf to become good at golf. That's what brevitypitch.com does for you. Tell them Brian sent you.

Here we go. Hey, Dustin, you ever notice there's a pattern to every year that people tend to ignore in sales?

Definitely. It seems to be the same thing over and over again, but people complain about it each quarter with all these different ups and downs that are happening and no one seems to actually plan for it. But it seems that Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4. There's these trends that happen every single year in sales and it's how do you kind of prepare for that and get ready for it? But nobody seems to do that.

Yeah, because let's face it, what happens in Q1 that everyone forgets what happened last year in Q1?

They're gonna take a lot of time to give you the comp and the sales plan. It's gonna be confusing those first few months. You probably don't know what your comp or sales plan is. So you're just kind of going off of what happened last year. And there's, you know, a little muddiness and confusion around the sales plan typically.

And what do people do?

They probably get a little complacent and they don't, or, you know, they just assume it's gonna be like last year, but most likely they're gonna add more to whatever it was last year and they're gonna make sure it's more aggressive. But people probably just kind of get a little not as proactive as they should be and they kind of get behind the 8 ball probably going into the next quarter typically.

Yeah, they wait till they get their territory and their quota before they start focusing and working.

Exactly.

And there goes 90 days. But what they don't do is they don't realize that they don't get that 90 days back. So by the time you— if you get— oh, and then they get mad because the quota is too high, the comp plan's too low. And then they start looking for a job so that there goes another 90 days. And all of a sudden people are like blaming everybody else instead of saying, this happens every year. How do you prevent it from upsetting your whole year? Because Q1 is a good quarter. You've got stuff that didn't close in Q4 that's going to slip. Everybody's kind of got their budgets allocated and they start probably around February or March. And if you're not known, liked, and trusted in those accounts, what happens?

You're gonna miss out.

You're gonna miss out. Right.

And it's much better to be ahead of the curve at the beginning of the year and start closing some big deals versus trying to play catch up later.

Yeah. So I think you have to anticipate that's going to happen. And it really comes into how you handle Q3 and Q4, because you think your quote is going to be assigned in January or February, but it's thought out in Q3 and Q4 in those planning sessions. And everybody thinks, oh, they go offsite and they plan. Here's the plan. They double the quotas and cut the commission in half every year. So you gotta ask yourself, what am I willing to give up? Or if you wanna hoard it, then you're gonna get the quota for it. And this is where salespeople don't understand simple math. They think, if I sell a lot, I make a lot. Well, you have to sell a lot that they're not expecting. To make a lot. If they expect it, then you, it looks good, but you don't get paid on it because what ends up happening is your commission is just divided into your quota. And this is what a lot of reps don't get. They'll go like, I wanna hold onto the ABC account because I've had it forever.

Okay.

But you go and put the quota or the pipeline as $1 million, Every manager's going to say, oh, you got $1 million in pipeline. Why can't I just give that to you in quota? And people get sad. Well, at least I'll have that million dollars. It's like, yeah, but you won't get paid on it. Well, of course I'll get paid on it. Well, no, your commission rate goes down because your quota is going up and people can't understand simple math. And when I talk to reps and I ask them, you know, what's your commission rate? Oh, it depends. It's like, if you don't know what your commission rate is, how are you going to be excited about it? Depends on what? Depends how big the deal is. Yeah. But if you know what the rate is, and I've seen so many reps wrestle with this, and I think it requires you've got to start thinking ahead and keeping track of what goes on every year because Pretty much the same things go on every year over and over again. And I used to like, okay, what do I want next year? What am I willing to give up? Because if you want to keep a key account or a key opportunity, you either got to sandbag the potential or give it up in exchange for something else. And ask yourself, am I a new territory person or am I more of an account manager upsell person. And if you're a new territory person, holding on to a big account that has $1 million in pipeline isn't doing you any good. It's taking up your time and you're not getting paid for it.

It's a great perspective. And I know a lot of times I was always trying to I don't want to say show off, but I felt confident in my pipeline and the deals. So I would make it pretty known that those were going to close on whatever date going into next year. But the problem is, to your point, if your manager, the leadership knows that those are likely to close going into next year and you have it in the pipeline, then they're automatically going to add that. So I learned that the hard way many times, and you have to kind of prepare for that. The other thing too is it was Mind-boggling to me. But when I worked for all these companies that people didn't understand the commission plan or the comp plan, I mean, I know they'd make it complicated on purpose. There's no doubt about that. But still, at the end of the day, you need to be able to figure it out because if you don't understand how you're getting paid and where you can make more money, because there's always these kickers and different scenarios, I think that was mind-boggling to me because a lot of people just didn't understand that. I'm pretty analytical, so I always like to dig into the numbers and I want to know what I need to do to get there. So I'm, I'm like planning way in advance in October, November for that type of stuff. But, and then I, the other thing too is when I worked for bigger companies, I don't know what you see, but the bigger companies, they, you know, they keep chopping up the territories. And I think in a way they, they want people to only make a certain amount of money and that's why they keep chopping stuff up. So I realized that later in my career too. I was like, it doesn't matter. Even if I crushed it and did all this, it's still going to be really hard to make a certain amount above. whatever the quota is. So I think sometimes I realized when I worked for those bigger companies, it was, it was almost impossible to navigate that and make, you know, double what the quota was because of how they kind of chopped the territories up. That's a little bit of an excuse, but, you know, some stuff that's kind of outside of your control. So just something to keep in mind if you work for a bigger company.

Yeah. And so, you know, what I've seen every Q1 is everyone comes in sleepy in the first 2 weeks in January. And they like, when are we getting our comp plan? Well, you're not going to get it till February or March. And guess what? It's going to look identical to last year's comp plan except for the quota's up and the commission's down and the territory's smaller. So that's what it's going to be. Don't sit around wondering what it's going to be. And if you're unhappy thinking about getting another job, go get another job because the time doesn't stop and pause. At that job either. Everybody thinks it's just like, oh, there's always going to be plenty of time. If you really keep track of how time flies and how long each thing takes, you'll realize you got to hit the ground running, you know. And sitting around and waiting for somebody else to tell you something, being reactive. Isn't doing you any good because it creates a great excuse, but no one cares because your manager's like, ah, go sell something. They don't care. They're not going to pay you on it. And I think you really have to look at Q1 as you got to hit the ground running because that time is so critical because you really solid quarters are Q1, Q2, and Q4. Are the only times, and even Q4, it's not a full quarter. And I think people make that mistake of like dragging their feet and then rushing because then when you rush, deals tend to get smaller and squirrelier and tend not to close as opposed to taking your time and doing it right from the beginning.

That's smart. And then it, you can kind of Keep repeating that cycle every year. If you, if you're planning the right way going into Q1, you're being proactive, you're hitting the ground running to your point, then that's gonna set up the rest of your year to be hopefully a lot less stressful. Because once you start getting behind on that number, that's where that stress, that burnout, that long days, and you're kind of banging your head against the wall and, you know, the not so fun part, parts of sales. So if you can get ahead of it in Q1, then ideally going into Q4, you, you maybe perhaps already hit your number for the year, you hit your financial goals. And you still want to close some stuff, but you can kind of be planning again going into the following year. So it creates like a better cycle. We're talking about the cycles of the year. If you can maximize Q1 and kind of start the year off strong, which of course I think everyone wants to, but are you actually doing the things daily, weekly to do that and not kind of, you know, going to the QBR in January? The first 2 weeks are usually shot. No one's doing anything because they're trying to recover from The, the time off during the holidays and then, you know, how do you kind of just start off strong? So I, I have that mentality and then also towards the end of the year trying to, you know, replicate that too and, and understand what's gonna happen. So, but yeah.

So in Q2, people particularly all warmed up, ready to go, and that's great, but everyone thinks that the rest of the year is gonna be like Q2. Which it isn't. So everyone does Q2 really well, but then comes Q3 and everybody messes up again because they want to take a vacation. July, you know, Q2 ends in June, then you hit July 4th holiday weekend, the 2 biggest vacation weeks of the year. So everyone takes some time off. Great. But then you come back and everybody else is off. And if you're doing big deals, it's hard to understand where everybody is and available during that time. And, and EMEA, forget it. They take August off and then Labor Day comes in the beginning of September and everybody tries to rush everything through and finger-pointing starts. And it's hard to have a Q3. And my biggest— it took me a couple years before it got through my granite head that Every Q3 is pretty much identical. July and August, I think the economy stopped. Someone turned the switch off or something. All of a sudden there's nobody around. Nobody's interested in talking about business, yet the requirements are still there. And everybody had a big pipeline going into Q3 and then wonders why it's not happening. And then what do people do? Maybe they delay their vacation because they panic. But you can delay your vacation, but then when are you going to take it? In September? No, right? And then there's all the bonehead trade shows in September and October where everybody's like going away thinking that everything is on automatic when they're away at a trade show, right? And your manager can't get them. They're a Dreamforce or whatever and thinking that, oh, it's plenty of time. We got 6 months left. Well, July and August are gone. September's a crunch. And then comes October and that's when management tends to do the offsites and do their analysis on the territories and next year's planning. So they're not available. And that's when they're thinking about your quota. And if you were the nice little Boy Scout and you fill up the CRM with this huge pipeline, you might as well just take a little, you know, marker and write a bullseye on your head.

Give the quota to me.

And, and if you're not sitting down with your manager explaining to them what you want to do the next year, meaning what territory do you want? What are you willing to give up? They will do what they want to do, and what it'll be is they'll do it equal instead of equitable or appropriate or effective for maximizing revenue. And if you don't do that, then Q1 comes and you get saddled with this quota because once it's assigned, it's really hard to pull it back. Because it's in the system. It has to be allocated in a certain way. Everyone gets upset if the quota isn't allocated completely or at the right ratio. I ran into this all the time. And everyone gets upset. And if your manager's got a backbone, they'll push back. But most managers don't. They do what they're told. That's how they became a manager. So, and then they just stuff it down your throat. And you have to eat it or leave. And neither of those is really good. If you eat it, you don't make money, you're not happy. If you leave, you gotta start all over again somewhere else. And that feels good for the first 90 days, but you don't, you get a draw. They, they think you're Mr. Wonderful, but they don't give you good territory. They give you the leftovers because the smart reps there. Told their manager what they wanted and they got what they wanted where the revenue is, not where the revenue isn't.

I learned to try to take those vacations in July because it's exactly what you said. It's the same thing every year. I'm not great at taking vacations anyway and trying to take a break. So that's a, I think if you're a salesperson, July and maybe August are a great time to take that break because, you know, it's gonna be really hard to get meetings and keep things going as well. The other thing that I kind of found is because there's so much vacation going on in July, August, it's actually a good time for me where I can do a lot more sort of strategic planning for the back half of the year, but also a little bit going into the following year. So I kind of get ahead during that time because I feel like it is a little bit more quiet and there's not as many things. So why not maximize that time to take a break a little bit for yourself, but also do some planning and thinking long term? Not every salesperson can think long-term like that. But I always tried to kind of map stuff out while I had time to do that. And also when you know that's gonna be happening every summer or every Q3, it doesn't get you as frustrated. And then September, you know, it's gonna pick up substantially, but not going too fast too. I think that's September. Then you start getting into October, people try to go too fast and just cram stuff in, which I know we're gonna talk about probably Q4 here in a second. But Also not trying to push too hard in September because that can kind of backfire as well before the holidays.

Yeah, because, right, Q4 then comes and everybody thinks Q4 is 3 months long until you look at the calendar and like everybody takes the last 2 weeks off, especially at big companies, the companies that you want to sell to. And All the big companies who sell to the big companies do their enterprise license agreements in Q4. So legal and procurement, you know, they're working on 7-figure deals with the big boys trying to negotiate them and their renewals and all this stuff. And you bring your tiny little quarter-million-dollar deal in there and they're like, ah, it's behind here. I'm going on vacation. We'll pick this up in January. And you're like, what? And everybody, you know, because here we are, you know, you got November where you got Thanksgiving in the US, and then December is really 2 weeks long of effective time. So if it's not on the radar with a lot of momentum, it's a lot of MacGyver time to get it through.

Administratively.

And everybody thinks when they get the champion says, yeah, I wanna pick you. That's, that's the end of— that's the beginning of the deal, not the end of the deal. They, they go running around hitting the gong saying, hey, I got this. The champion says they're going with us. Oh, that's nice. What's the receptionist think? That's what I always used to ask reps.

Oh, that's a great one.

It's like, yeah, that's great. But where's the money coming from? How are they justifying it? What's the process? Who in procurement is gonna manage it? Who has to sign off for it? And everybody goes, what? Now I should have thought of that. Yeah, that's the selling part because we don't get paid until it closes, not somebody says, yeah, we picked you. How many times I've heard we picked you and you got, that's when it begins instead of that's when it ends.

I think you may have told me this at some point. I don't know where I got it from, but I try to plan Q4 and, and really that year, the, the year end by Thanksgiving. So if I don't get it done by Thanksgiving in that Q4 timeframe, it's just unlikely for it to happen. Of course, there's, Different circumstances. And if you have a lot of momentum, stuff can happen in December. But it's never a great feeling when you're scrambling, like you're scrapping and clawing, you're trying to ask for favors, you're trying to get stuff done in December before the year ends, and you don't even get time to take a break those last couple weeks. So I, I try to, in my head, think that the year ends around Thanksgiving. And if I get something after that, that's great. That's kind of icing on the cake. But I, I plan to get everything done before then because of everything. You just mentioned. So it's a, it's an interesting dynamic. And then I think, yeah, usually when someone's telling you it's good like that, it's usually the opposite effect. It's probably not, not good. And the classic thing during Q4 is for people to say, let's just pick this back up next year, like you said. But that's when you lose so much momentum though. I mean, that could be 2-month, 3-month gaps. So if you don't have stuff on the calendar, That's where I think the deals just really slow down, whether you had some type of approval or not. That can be brutal. And then you try to pick back up and you basically have to start all over again in January or February whenever you talk to them because they don't remember everything. You probably don't remember everything. You have to kind of recap it and kind of start from scratch. And that's just not fun. Of course, of course that's going to happen for sure. But yeah, I've learned my lessons over the years on some of that.

Right, because every day that it doesn't close, the competitors are in there muddying the waters. Hey, we got a new feature, we got a new release. Hey, we had a price change, we've got a bundle. And all of a sudden your champion goes, oh, you got that new thing? Yeah, let me take a look at that. And what happens is your deal starts over again. And I think the point of this conversation is this is consistent. This is not the exception, this is the rule. And if it's the rule, why don't you keep track of it and keep track of these nuances in your year? And that's why I have the annual calendar up in my office, because I look at it and the first thing I do every January is I mark off July and August, and I put up some kind of project that keeps me focused where I, I need dedicated time, because I know my business is slower in July and August. I take the holidays and I, I mark them off. I take the, the parts of the month that matter most— renewals of things that I use every month And what I've done recently is I started— I was grading just every day, and now I grade a week at a time because I have a— weeks are very consistent for me. And if I do my, you know, the work to get done, my deliverables every week, and then I say, how well did I do with those? What did I learn? How could I do it better next time? And if you keep track of this so that, and before I throw, don't throw away last year's calendar, but I, before I put it away in the other room, I lay it down and I leave it down for about a month. So like I make sure I put the things that are consistent throughout the years onto it because you think, oh, I'll remember this. You won't remember it. You think you will. And this is the dangerous part where you think you're going to remember it and you don't. That's the dangerous part because you're going under the assumption you know, and you— and the minute it happens, you'll go, I knew that was going to happen. But it doesn't do you any good because managing your year is a lot like managing a deal. It's all about prevention because once Q1 comes and your manager doesn't know what you want to do, doesn't know what accounts you care about, Doesn't know the investments that you've made, the things that you want to do the next year, the type of territory that you like and you'll flourish in. They're just going to roll the dice. And especially today, you know, managers kind of look at people as just cogs in their wheel. And if you don't fit into the wheel, well, Go fit in someone else's wheel. And, and how many times do you have this type of conversation? They're not going to initiate it. They're not going to sit down, hey, Dustin, what would you like to do next year?

They don't care.

They got 10 of you and they know you're all going to whine. But some of them want to become managers. Some of them want to become rich. Some of them just want to hang out. Tell your manager what you want to do so that you can kind of mold your territory the next year. And if they won't, then you know what type of manager you have, that they don't find your skill or your desires aligned with theirs, which is okay. You know, and now you know it 3, 4, 6 months before They put it into paper for you, and you know, really take a good look at your comp plan and put it into a spreadsheet to to see what you would make with the type of territory that you desire. And a lot of people don't do that. You know, because today comp plans. The whole point of it is so you don't make money. The point of the comp plan is not for you to get rich, it's for them to get rich.

I thought it's uncapped though for us, for the salespeople.

It's uncapped. But what are they doing today? They're saying, oh, you don't get anything on the first 20% towards your quota, which is quite common because I think the first 20% happens anyway. But 20%'s a lot. That's a fifth of the year. That's like 2 months you're working for free just to, to get your bogey, to get your handicap before anything of interest kicks in.

Yeah.

And then to your point, I think the mistake people make is they try to have all these conversations in Q1, but they're planning for this stuff in Q3, Q4. So you have to, Have all this stuff together then, and I think same thing as New Year's resolutions. Everyone waits till the beginning of the year to come up with all these goals and plans, and then they you know drop them off a couple weeks later. But why not in Q3, Q4, whatever time, like start planning for this stuff proactively and have those conversations and and map this stuff out? Because if you don't, it's not going to happen. And to your point, if you don't write it down in some way, whether it's that vision calendar board that you have or on your computer or on a, you know, sticky notes, whatever it may be. Like you have to write it down. And the other thing too is I think people get, they have these goals. So it's $1 million in quota or whatever it is. And they get so enamored with that big number, how to get there and all this stuff. And they keep thinking about these big numbers, but you really just have to have a system, stuff you do daily, weekly to get there and kind of break it down by month and week of what you need to do. And that kind of, then you kind of forget about the goal and how much money you're going to make. That will, that will happen if you just do stuff daily and kind of focus on moving forward and making progress. So that's something too that's helped me is not get distracted by these big numbers, but just focus on each day, week, what I can do.

And to become great at sales, the best way is to model somebody who already Has become good at sales and to hear other people who have become great at sales and the journey that they're going through, the false beliefs, the misnomers, the mindset issues, all of the stuff that gets in our way between where we are and the income that we want. Let's face it, we're in sales because we're money motivated, we're competitive, We want to be better every day than we were yesterday. And how do we do that? There's really, you know, read a book, listen to a podcast. That's good. Good start. I like it. But then you have to take action. And then you want both tactical and strategic ideas. You want mindset. You want strategy. You want to understand how companies buy. You want really deep content and examples, case studies, so that you can learn from other people's mistakes.

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Few people do.

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