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Happy Friday to 7,880 SaaS sales professionals.

In today's newsletter I am giving you the 5-Step System to turn your life vision into daily & weekly action steps.

Let's dive in

The SaaS Sales Academy kicked off this week! Please welcome our 28 Founding Members!

Step 1: Vision

Sales is a marathon, not a sprint.

In order to play the long game you need longterm focus.

Most sellers forget WHY they are in sales. They're focused on closing the next deal, hitting the next quarter, the next promotion. They are attached to the outcomes. They are focused on the short term.

That's why they burn out when things get tough.

In order to play the long game you need a longterm life vision.

A vision consists of life goals (end goals): happy family, house in the hills, beautiful vacations. This is your WHY, your purpose.

Having a strong purpose will help you detach from shortterm outcomes and stay focused on the longterm process.

Exercise: describe your perfect life in 10 years in as much detail as possible: financial, professional, relationships, health, lifestyle, spiritual

Vision

Step 2: Goals

Did you know that 91% of all New Year's Resolutions fail?

It's for 2 reasons:

1. People overestimate what they can do in 1 year (but they underestimate what they can do in 10 years)

2. 12 months is too long of a time frame for effective goal setting

Sounds weird to you? This is empirically proven.

It's why there's a hockey stick in sales. For 3/4 quarters most sales organisations run behind targets. And then in Q4 they blow it out of the water to save the fiscal. The classic hockey stick.

What if we operated with the same urgency in January that we have in December? That's the whole idea behind the 12 Week Year.

When you set goals for 12 weeks, you don't have time to procrastinate. You don't have time to slack off. You either stay focused or you will miss your goals.

Exercise: Set a SMART goal (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, timely) for the next 12 weeks. E.g. 150% quota attainment, $1M pipeline etc.

Recommended reading!

Step 3: Plan

Your vision is the WHY. Your goal is WHAT.

Your plan is the HOW: How will you achieve the 12 Week Goal?

A plan is simply a list of activities you will perform to hit the goal. It's the actual work you're committing to doing every day and every week.

A plan should be simple: the fewer activities, the better.

However, it should be detailed: which activities EXACTLY will you perform every day and every week?

Example: Goal = build $1M in pipeline

• Weekly activities: research 5 accounts, build a list of 25 prospects, write & launch Outreach sequence

• Daily activities: 30 calls, 30 emails, LI messages

Exercise: list all of the activities that will help you reach your 12 week goal. For salespeople I recommend using my free Quota Attainment Plan (QAP) template.

Step 4: Time blocking

Once you know which activities you need to do every week and every day, it's time to block them in the calendar. Otherwise they're not going to happen.

Whitespace in your calendar kills productivity. Time blocking protects focus.

Most sellers only spend 1/4 of their time actively selling. It's because internal meetings, email, Slack and other admin work eats up their time.

In my opinion you should block up to 50% of your entire work week for active selling: research, prospecting and pipeline generation.

Leave enough whitespace for customer meetings and limit low value tasks.

Example of effective time blocking

Step 5: Measure Execution

The MOST important step of all 5!

If you do not measure your execution, how do you know you're following the plan?

What I recommend all my coachees is to have a quota attainment plan (QAP) as their Plan and a Prospecting Tracker as their execution measurement.

By tracking your actual prospecting numbers you'll gain massive insight into conversion rates, which channels work best and how well you're able to stick to the plan.

Grab the free template here.

Exercise: measure your execution & conversion rates every week for the next 4 weeks. This will give you a pretty good idea whether or not you'll be on track to hit your plan.

That's it! Now you have the 5 Step System to smash your Q4 quota.