End the Year Strong: Setting Yourself Up for Success in 2027

Intro: You’re listening to The Sales Focus Podcast. Your go-to for developing high-performing teams, next level sales skills, and real results. It’s time to get focused.

Welcome back to the Sales Focus, Inc. Podcast. I’m your host, Tony Horwath, and today we’re going to focus on what everyone really cares about right now. How do I end 2026 with a strong revenue and margin number? What can I do to my sales team to make sure we finish with strong numbers going into the end of the year? Truthfully, if you’re a manager, you really should be focused right now. What can you close? But also, what do I want to adjust for in 2027? What do I want to change? Do I need to change my team, individuals? Do I need to change my comp plans or my incentive plans, my targets, my process? There’s so many things to look at. But what I want to focus on right now is what can you do now in order to make sure 2026 finishes the way you want it to be. First and foremost, you probably have a pipeline of opportunities that have gone cold. Most salespeople, as I’ve mentioned before, don’t do enough follow-up. They fall off after typically about five emails or phone calls, What it really takes in most instances, it could be up to 12 follow-ups. So a lot of salespeople fall off, they start chasing the next best thing, and those leads become cold leads. If you’re not reaching out to the prospects, someone else is, because they’re not going to be calling you back, maybe after a while, if they really remember you or really find, hey, I really need that product or service. But most likely, they’re going to fall back and say, hey, someone else can help me if this person’s not that interested. Even though you have followed up, you think in your mind enough times, the truth is it really takes between five and 12 times to get a prospect to the level of interest to close deals. So look at your cold leads, go back over your pipeline, your forecast, get into your CRM, develop an outreach program so you can contact these people and just stay in touch to see what may come back to you. The second one is really look for a referral program. What can you do with your existing clients maybe to bring in new opportunities? Can you start generating partnerships that can bring in opportunities more quickly? So look at a referral program, look at a partnership program. What other companies that maybe do a complimentary service to yours or a product where you can work with them and start helping each other to finish the year strong? The other part to this is work your existing clients. If you have happy clients, that’s where your best opportunity for quick revenue can come from. Reach out to them. Find out what’s working well. Maybe some areas you still need to improve upon. But what else can you do for them? And again, when you’re talking about referrals, there’s nothing better than a happy customer to give you a referral. If your salespeople aren’t reaching out and getting referrals from your existing team or your existing clients, you’re missing the biggest opportunity you have. So look for partnerships or develop a referral program if you don’t have one, but reach out to your existing clients and talk to them about the referrals that you can develop. Also, let’s get into some evaluations you can do quickly. look at your sales process are you doing the right outreach are you targeting to the right people your ICP your ideal client profile or your ideal partner profile are you doing enough to generate the interest they’re going to give you the revenue in the right amount of time now if your sales cycle is 6 months 12 months 18 months 2026 is over, right? You’re looking at everything that’s already in your pipeline. What can you close now? And how do you get 2027 started off strong? But if you’re more of a tactical sales organization and you have a, let’s say a one touch close to a 90 day close, there’s still opportunity out there. You really need to focus, but always be evaluating what your sales process looks like, meaning the qualification process, right? Meaning, are you really sending out content that’s going to make your company relevant to those customers where you’re trying to solve problems? The other part is doing an evaluation of where your SEO is and also where you are in the AI world, right? A lot of people are doing searches within AI and you can be generating leads that way. If you go to our website at salesfocusinc.com, we have a free sales evaluation tool that will also look at your digital marketing strategy going into the end of this year and also into 2027. It doesn’t cost you a penny. We’ll give you the information. We may want to talk to you, but we’re going to give you the information on where maybe some of your shortcomings are on the sales side, whether it’s people or process or target or price points. or your KPIs aren’t set up properly, there are some things that we can really help you with quickly that could still save your 2026 or make it better than you ever expected. And that other part of looking at your digital marketing campaign, are your keywords aligned properly? Are you really going after the right targets? And on the SEO side, not just the SEO side, but also on the website, is your website running effectively, right? When people hit your site, you want it to be sticky. You want them to spend time there. You want them to make sure that there’s a call to action and they are constantly sending you leads. If you’re not generating inbound leads, something needs to be fixed in your digital marketing campaign. So take advantage of it. It’s free. Just go to our website, salesfocusing.com. go into services and you’ll find that free sales assessment that includes a digital marketing assessment as well. And we’ll take a look at all that for you. If you have taken the time to really go through those five things, meaning build your referral and partner program, looking at your process, looking at your ideal client profile or partner profile. If you’re going back over old leads and generating new outreach to those old leads that may have gone cold, You can find new revenue for 2026. But also, if you’re a manager right now, you have to start planning for 2027. It’s never too early. Start looking at things like, do I have, again, the right resources in place? Do I need more people? Do I need to do more of a face-to-face sale versus telephone sale? Sales is not just about emails and phone calls. If I had my druthers, I’d do all of my sales to face-to-face. It’s not always efficient because people are spread out all over the world. And for us, our clients are all over the globe. So it’s impossible for us to do face-to-face, but nothing’s more effective than a face-to-face situation in selling. So take your time. Look at what can be done today. Look at what can be done tomorrow for 2026 and for 2027. Let us help you. Again, hit our website and go through our free assessment. I look forward to speaking to you again. Thank you.