Episode Details

We are moving into the most dangerous time of year for sales professionals . . . the holidays. 

From now until the first week of January, you’re going to face a perfect storm of distractions, excuses, and temptations that can absolutely destroy your year end number and your first quarter production next year. Sadly, most salespeople don’t even see it coming. It’s not until the end of December that they realize they’re in trouble, but by then, it’s too late. 

The Trouble With the Holidays

The trouble typically starts Thanksgiving week in the United States and continues as we move into the first week of December. That’s when distractions start flooding in. You’ve got company parties, family obligations, shopping to do. All of which knock you off of your routine causing your daily prospecting and follow up activities to drop.

And let’s be honest, you’ve been grinding hard for the entire year and you’re ready to let your guard down and coast a bit before the end of the year. 

By the second and third week of December many of the opportunities in your pipeline that you were counting on closing start to ghost you or tell you that their pushing decisions off to next year. And by now you’re so mentally checked out that you’re barely doing any prospecting at all. 

Once we move into the Christmas and New Years weeks your office is a ghost town, the phones are silent, your pipeline is stalled, you’ve missed your forecast and you convince yourself there’s no point in even trying. 

And just like that, you’ve lost an entire month of selling.

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Holiday Sales Math

But here’s the brutal truth: You didn’t just lose a month. You lost three months. Because all of those prospects that pushed off decisions until the new year are not coming back; and that empty pipeline you’re staring at, as you move into January, is going to haunt you through March and potentially, through the entire year. 

Your average sales cycle is probably 60-90 days. That means deals you put into the pipeline over the next two to three weeks are crucial for a good January. Likewise, the ones you add in December are the key to delivering a solid February and March. 

But if you allow the Holidays to take you off of your game, you might not recover until April or May. Your entire first quarter is shot. 

This is the killer and how so many promising sales careers end prematurely. I’ve witnesse