Twitter Facebook LinkedIn Flipboard 0 The Secret: Plan Your Work And Work Your Plan October is a special month for sales teams. Most companies in the U.S. follow a calendar fiscal year, and see October as a start to the “final lap” of the year, or Q4. This is when sales teams need to close-out deals and finish the year strong. At the same time, sales plans and Quarterly Business Reviews need preparation, to ensure the coming year starts right. No matter how you look at it, October is when salespeople need to plan their work and work their plan. Think and act with these mindsets, and you’ll kill it in Q4. Everything Is Urgent Major events like OpenWorld and Dreamforce BOTH occur in October, and take a week out of the schedule. People return to the office with maybe six weeks left in the quarter. December is typically when businesses wrap-up the year and head out for the holidays (which makes scheduling a meeting difficult). Whip your email inbox into shape. Invest time responding to the most important messages, deleting the irrelevant ones, and organizing the others. Schedule same-day or same-week appointments. Don’t procrastinate! Whether following-up on inbound leads or prospecting into an account, suggest meeting with the prospect that afternoon, or just 1-2 days later. After all, you’re just as booked as everyone else. Walk faster. That’s right. When you put pep in your step, and literally pick up your pace, you generate a sense of hustle that becomes infectious to everyone around you. Make Each Week Super Productive There’s no time to screw around in Q4. Hack away at the unessential and tackle the tasks that will move you forward. Plan your success. Take a “bookends” approach to the week: Mondays and Fridays are for internal meetings, research, and administrative work; Tuesdays to Thursdays are for sacred prospecting and meetings with prospects and customers. Zero-in on who and what are most important. Talk to people you must contact or hear from to get things done. See The Ball, Hit The Ball People already know what’s required to win, but most don’t do that stuff. If you had a crappy year in sales, then create new habits, new rituals. Act like the best and you will become the best. Select tools that will fine-tune the machine that is you. From Evernote to Momentum to Outlook, there’s a bottomless toolbox of technologies that will help. Simply decide to finish the year strong. There are so many helpful ways to make it happen, so pick a few that make sense to you. Try these out today and Q4 will be a breeze. Twitter Tweet Facebook Share Email This article originally appeared on According to Ralph Barsi - Ralph Barsi's Sales Blog and has been republished with permission.Find out how to syndicate your content with B2C Join our Telegram channel to stay up to date on breaking news coverage Author: Jay Leonard Jay is a UK-based cryptocurrency expert, specialising in fundamental analysis and medium to long term investments. Jay has a great deal of hands-on experience in analysing financial markets and performing technical analysis. Jay is currently focusing on the institutional adoption of cryptocurrency and what it means for the future of … View full profile ›More by this author:Top Trending Meme Coins: ELON, HOGE, SAMO, TAMA, MARVIN, BABYDOGE, MONAHotbit Exchange Forced to Suspend Service As it’s Under Criminal InvestigationCameo CEO Steven Galanis Wallet Hacked – $231k Worth of NFTs Stolen