Closing Q4: Budgets, Urgency, and ROI Pull-Through | SOS Ep. 377

We break down a Q4 game plan that turns limited selling days and budget dynamics into a focused path to close. We show how to qualify for budget, reduce perceived risk, and become memorable so champions can sell your solution internally.

• Q4 as execution: pull-through over prospecting
• budget mechanics, Section 179, and spend-it-or-lose-it reality
• reducing risk with ROI, timelines, and training plans
• identifying decision makers and mapping approval chains
• compressing calendars: 48 selling days and reverse planning
• three levers: right buyer, time focus, structured pressure
• shifting from noise to memorable, buyer-centered follow-up
• grit check for outside sales and where coaching helps

Book a free Q4 strategy session with Mike. 

Email: Mike@SurvivingOutsides.com

Connect on LinkedIn and say, “I need a Q4 strategy.”

Chapters

• 0:00 Q4 Mindset: Playoffs Begin
• 1:37 Why Budgets Drive Year-End Buying
• 4:47 Risk, ROI, and Decision Dynamics
• 8:10 Stop Prospecting, Start Closing
• 11:40 The Real Count: 48 Selling Days
• 14:20 Three Pull-Through Levers
• 17:10 Grit Check: Are You Built For This
• 21:00 Be Memorable, Not Noisy
• 24:20 Coaching, Clarity, and Next Steps

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:00

Surviving Outside Sales Podcast, hosted by Michael Kelly, presented by Sales Builder Academy. The goal is to survive and thrive in all phases of outside sales, whether you're getting in, dominating, or getting out. Surviving Outside Sales. Now off the show.

SPEAKER_02: 0:29

Welcome to the Surviving Outside Sales Podcast. I'm your host, Mike O'Kelly. Uh today is the first day of Q4. And Q4 is like the playoffs. So the rest of the Q1, Q2, Q3 is the regular season. This is the playoffs. This is what separates the good from the great. The ability to hit the numbers, to scale the business in Q4, and to end the year strong. And I always get excited for Q4. I love it. October, November, December. The weather starts to get the weather starts to get cooler. I love cold weather. I really do. Um I love wearing uh long sleeves. I love wearing jeans. I love wearing pants. I love wearing jackets. I love walking outside and having that like cold air in the lungs. I love it. I do enjoy my time, you know. I enjoyed the summer with the kiddos at the pool, but I do enjoy the winter and especially this time of year. Q4 and Q1 of every year, I absolutely love. And I'll kind of tell you why. So Q4 is the execution phase of all your hard work for the entire year. Okay. Um is the planning, preparation, and the reset for the file for the next year. And I absolutely love it. I absolutely love it. I love building the process, I love uh organizing everything. And then Q4 is the pull through. And then I love analyzing what worked, what didn't work for Q1, and then starting back over. We're hurtling towards 2026. So right now, this is Q4 is the time for you to pull through what you've been doing all year. You're gonna have a lot of opportunities because a lot of businesses are gonna have budget that they have to spend. And if you're not familiar with how budgets work, if let's say a company has a budget for marketing or sales spend or investment in new technology, new product, um, new tools, you got about$100,000, or let's say it's$100,000. Okay. And let's say right now they're at 80K, they've got to spend that money, or what'll happen is when they redo the budgets next year, they could lose some of that money. Because accounting, the financial side of every organization is always looking to tighten up, to pull back. Okay. Sales and marketing are always looking to push forward, push the envelope, ask for more, be more aggressive. Accounting, finance, pull back. I know I'm married to a CPA. Uh, my wife is in finance, and that's exactly what she does. She pulls back. I try to push, she pulls back. And it's good to have that kind of balance. But for companies, they have a budget and they have these big budgetary meetings, and there's a lot of time that is spent on allocating resources and earmarking resources for new technology, investments, et cetera. Not to mention the fact that there are tax benefits where they can write off a certain number per year. That's the 179 write-off. If you're not familiar with the 179 tax write-off, you can just Google it. Um, every business tries to invest in new uh equipment, something that's gonna help the business, capital outlay, and then the government will let you write it off on your taxes up to a certain limit. So huge tax benefits for a business, and the sales and marketing team want to spend that money. So if you don't know already, that's the first thing you should do. Find out the budget, find out what they're looking at. And the the thing that when I talk to sales professionals, I talk to a lot of sales professionals, I've talked to a lot, I've coached a lot, um, hundreds of sales professionals over the last several years. And it still amazes me the shyness that sales professionals have when they're speaking with business owners or purchasing managers, office managers, or um somebody, a manager that could help them with the final sale. It is shocking to me how shy they get. And they don't ask for specifics. For instance, they could love your product, but if they don't have budget in 2025, the chances of them pulling it in are slim to none. And here's the reason why every person has a boss. So you go and talk to like a purchasing manager. The purchasing manager is going to have to justify why they're going to go over budget for a line item category for your product or service. That means they have to stick their neck out and sell your product to their boss. It could be the VP of sales, it could be the VP of operations, the COO, CEO, CFO, um a senior level executive. They have to go to that executive and say, this is the justification for doing XYZ. They're sticking their neck out. That means now their fate is tied to your product. If it goes over budget, that's exactly how it's viewed from a senior level. So if you've got a product, let's say it's$50,000. Okay. Um, I'm gonna just use examples from the industry that I was in, which is capital equipment, um, medical supplies, et cetera. Let's say your device is$50,000, okay? They've spent all their money. You have to have a great pitch with documentation and proof and a full and an ironclad plan on how they're gonna get a massive ROI without the risk, because at that point, what happens is it is risk mitigation. And everybody is not, or most people are risk averse. They do not, they don't want to have risk, they don't want to stick their neck out, they want to fly under the radar. And so unless you're talking with an owner, a single, single, single owner, single decision maker, controls everything, you know, if you're talking to a company that has a board of directors or you're talking to somebody that has to go to report to a senior level, um, it's gonna be a little harder. But if you're talking to a business owner, they can go over budget because they make the decisions. So you have to know your audience. You have to know the budget, you have to know the audience. And then what you have to do is you have to create a sense of urgency by crafting a ROI message, not strictly dollars and cents, but what this can do for the what this can do for that business or that business owner today, tomorrow, and in the future. And you really have to think of things that possibly you've never talked about before, or you have to find things that maybe they haven't even brought up yet. So if you're selling something and you talk to them and they say, I have no budget, I would craft a very this is gonna sound kind of uh like an oxymoron, but a detailed but succinct proposal that they can pass along and move on to the next account. Over budget is very difficult. You want that low-hanging fruit. You should already know who your 25 to 30, maybe 40 targets are. I would not do a lot of prospecting in Q4. Q4 is where you have to close deals, period. I would be working these deals and working them really hard and not worrying on prospecting as much. Because think about this. Also, let's say, for instance, nobody has met you. I know for me, if somebody reaches out to me this quarter is like, hey, I want to do X, Y, Z, I'm like, nope, I'm gonna mentally I'm already checked out until Q1 of 2026. And then I might revisit it. So you can kick the tires and see. You will get lucky occasionally that somebody has an immediate need for your product or service. So when I say you don't want to do a lot of prospecting, you just don't want to go to prospects over and over and over again, hoping that they're gonna close by the end of the year. You want to focus on the people that can buy and they can buy in the next month. Okay, there's only 49 selling days. After today, there's only 48 selling days in the month of or in Q4. Let me repeat that. Okay. There's only 49 selling days. And the reason why there's only 49 selling days is this year, Halloween falls on a uh Friday. So that day, I'm telling you, that day is gonna be a wash. Most business owners, most people have kids. Most people have young kids. You know, if you're a business owner or a person decision maker, probably in their 30s and 40s, they have kids. There's gonna be trick-or-treating. Um, it's also because Halloween is on a Friday night. Halloween is also an adult holiday. So people might be prep preparing for parties. Uh the fact that it falls on a Friday night means obviously there's no school the following day. So I believe that that Halloween 2025 is going to be a big, uh, a big a big day where people just um uh cat uh what's the word? Catch it in. Um kind of uh I'm just I'm missing the phrase. All right, I'll move on. I think you know what I mean. Like um, they're just gonna go through the motions that day. Nobody's gonna make a decision on October 31st. Okay, so that day is gone. That's number one. Okay. Uh the week of Halloween, okay, that's gone. Also, uh Veterans Day. Veterans Day, if you call in bankers, banks are closed November 11th. I don't know, I don't know when it falls on this year. Um, if it doesn't fall on a look at my calendar real quick, I know in real time this is not great um audio. Oh, it's on a Tuesday. Okay, so that's Veterans Day. Banks are closed. All right. Banks are closed, so if you call in bankers, but a lot of businesses will, if they if the banks are closed, that also affects their business. So some businesses will be open on that day, some won't. For this exercise, I'm taking that as an off day. Okay, so that's number two. The week of Thanksgiving, that's off. That's five days. Okay. So now by the end of November, we're up to seven business days affected or or unavailable. Then we get to Christmas, okay? The last two weeks of the year, I'm counting those off. I know, Mike, you know, Mike, a lot of people buy at the end of the year. Yes, they do, but you don't want to try to be pulling things the last two weeks of the year. Trust me, I have done it. It's not fun. I have done it for various reasons. Some some deals got delayed, and I've I've literally had paperwork uh signed on December 31st. Uh, you know, I've had 30,$30,000 commission checks hanging on the balance on December 31st. So, which is not fun. It's not fun to wait that long. So you don't want to do that. So those two weeks are gone because a lot of people are gonna be taking vacations. Now, does that mean that every single one of your prospects or every single one of your future buyers are gonna be taking off those last two weeks? No. However, that is a disruption in your business. And anytime there's a disruption, you have to take it away from your available pool of productivity. Okay. So you take those 10 days away, what are you left with? You're left with 77. Okay. There are 22, there are 22 business days on on average for every month. So that means there's 66 per quarter on average. You know, obviously February's got less, but on average, it's about 22 business days per month. All right. That's 66 days. Let's take 17 away and then let's take away today because today's gone. Uh, by the time you're listening to this, it might even be later than that. So now you have 48 business days. 48 business days, 48 opportunities to hit your number for Q4. If you have not put a plan together, if you do not have a strategy on how to do that, you are behind the eight ball. Now, if you want to have a strategy call about your Q4, you could always sign up for a free strategy session with me. Um, you can email me, Mike is thrivingoutsales.com. You can book some time on my calendar. The link is in the show notes. Or you can reach out to me on LinkedIn and say, I need a Q4 strategy. Because this is where careers are made. This is where commission dollars are earned. This is where job security comes into play. You have a very strong Q4, you're pretty much gonna guarantee yourself another two to three quarters. You gotta have a strong Q4, and you have to be able to pull through business. All right. So, three things you can do to pull through business. Okay. Number one, you gotta be calling on the right people. Okay, you got to know budgets, you gotta know decision makers, you have to be able to talk about budget return on investment. Okay, so you gotta have the right buyers, okay? You have to have the right time and attention, okay. Uh I closed a big deal uh when I was selling radiation machines because I went by an office 15 times in Q4. 15 times. This was not close to my office, uh close to my house, about two hours away, kind of in the middle of nowhere. And I had to do that. But I knew that this was a buyer and I was right, and I got this person to purchase. But I allocated a lot of my time. So, time and attention. You've got to focus on the people who are going to buy. Number one, budget, return on investment. You've got to understand if people do not have budget, they're just a prospect, kick them to the next year. Okay. If if they've already spent their budget, you've kind of missed your window already. It doesn't mean you're just gonna throw in the towel and you're not gonna do anything, but again, time and attention, 48 business days. And that is if you start on October 2nd, 48 business days left. So you've got to have time and attention. So think about it. That account that I, the account that I had 15 meetings with in Q4, it was several several meetings a week, several touch points, several conversations a week. Now, some of them was like literally we were talking every day, walking through the numbers, walking through the logistics of how it would work. Because also remember this you've also got to talk about how it's going to affect the business that you're selling to. If you're selling a product or service, how is that disruption gonna happen? There's gonna be training that's gonna be needed for their staff or for the or for the business owner. There's gonna be training, there's gonna be downtime, uptime. Downtime is how much time it's gonna take them to do the training, and then how much time is it gonna take them to be hands-on and and put that into their process? Downtime, uptime. And then what is the reasonable rate of return that they're gonna get in the next three months, six months, next year? That's what you have to focus on, okay? So budget, understanding the financials, time and attention. And then number three is you've got to force the issue. Okay. This is not sales, is not I'm gonna lead a horse to water and hope it drinks. Okay. Sometimes you have to force the issue. You have to nudge the client, you have to nudge the buyer. Sometimes, sometimes buyers do not can't get out of their own way. 30% of people are always gonna say yes. 30% of people are always gonna say no. And it's the 40% of the people in the middle that you have to convince. And that 40% of people, that is where sales careers are made. It's not in the 30%. If you just do enough, if you just do enough volumes of sales calls, you'll find 30%. And depending upon your product or service, if your product or service has national TV ads, national campaigns, if you have a huge budget where you can get a lot of one-on-one time, that's great. If you haven't, if you have a product that has name recognition in the market, fantastic. Most products, especially the clients that I reach out to, um, and I probably reach out, I mean, a lot of clients, a lot of people reach out to me in the sales world. Uh, they run, uh they reach out to me because they don't have the the name brand. They don't have the ones where they walk in and they say, hey, I'm with so-and-so company and the velvet rope opens, or oh yeah, we've been dying to try this product. That's most people that I speak with. And it probably makes sense because if you work for one of those companies where the velvet rope is opening, you probably aren't struggling, or you probably don't feel like you're struggling. But a lot of the sales professionals that I speak with, they're struggling with getting past the gatekeeper. They're struggling with getting time and attention from their accounts, and they're also struggling with their pull-through. So they feel like they're spinning the wheels and they feel as if they're just not getting anywhere. Again, if that's you, reach out to me. See if, see if I might be able to help you. Because I I I was I was actually just talking to a client earlier this week, and I said, You tomorrow is not promised in the sales world. Next month is not promised in the sales world. Next quarter is not promised in the sales world. You have got to do what you can with today. You can't say, well, you know what, I'll just pack it in and I'll see what happens in Q1. I guarantee you I know it's gonna happen in Q1 if you pack it in. Or if you just say, you know, it's too hard, it's too much work, Mike, it's too hard. If that's the case, sales might not be for you. I did have somebody that I spoke with about three or four months ago, and I flat out on the call, I just said, um, you know, I I'm not sure if sales is your strong suit. This person asked for my advice and I gave my honest opinion. Not everybody is built for this. Not everybody's built for sales, especially outside sales. Inside sales, you know, phone calls, Zoom meetings, it's a different beast. Outside sales, you got to pound the pavement, you have to see people in person, you have to go interrupt their business day when they may or may not know you're showing up. You're gonna you're gonna you have to deal with a lot of rejection. You're gonna hear no tens of thousands of times, and it can't affect you. It's not personal, but you have to be able to push through. You have to have a level of grit. And this individual that I was talking to, he just did not have the grit. And so I recommended that he he go elsewhere. And I've coached, I've coached somebody before um that was more of a marketing guy, and I recommended finding a marketing position. And he did. I've said, you know, I think your strong suit is actually marketing, it's not in sales, because you have a really good mind for like coming up with ideas and stuff like that. And he went back into marketing. And I thought that was really, I thought that was a really good decision. So if you want to have a chat, I'll give you um, I'm a very open book. I'll give you my honest opinion on what can happen, what you should do. And I do offer coaching. If it makes sense that you wanna, you want my help and I can guide you through Q4 and getting you prepared for Q one of 2026. Still crazy for me to say that. I feel like the year has just absolutely flown by. But if you want to get clarity on what you need to be doing, how you need to be doing it, and when you need to start, book a free strategy call with me. Reach out to me on LinkedIn, reach out to me, Mike at SurvivingOutsides.com, and let's have a conversation about what you're going to, what you're gonna need to do this quarter in order to set yourself up for success, not just this quarter, but for the quarters to follow. So I started Sales Builder Academy for sales professionals as a resource and a tool to learn how to build a business that'll scale so you can spend more time working on your business as opposed to in your business. I've been there, I have done all the sales calls, I have spun all the plates, I've done all the activity where if I took any time off, any time off, like two or three days, I saw a drop in my business and a drop in my momentum. And it was until I got great mentoring and great coaching myself that I realized that I was doing it wrong. And it was just small adjustments. It was small adjustments to leave a lasting impression on my accounts where it was almost like I was omnipresent. I was everywhere. It was just little things that I wasn't doing. I was doing a lot of hustling, like sprinting to accounts, making tons of sales calls, a lot of activity. But it wasn't as productive as it could have been. It wasn't as thoughtful. I wasn't lingering on the minds of my prospects after I was gone. And that's what you have to do. It's very similar in the dating world. You know, it's not about how many dates you have. It is are people thinking about you when you're not there? That is how people fall in love, and that's how people decide that they want to buy from you. It's how people also get hired, by the way. It's the exact same thing. Most of the big decisions in your life happen when you're not in the room. When I heard that for the first time about 15 years ago, 16 years ago, it absolutely blew my mind. It's so true. Most, if not all, of the big lifetime decisions in your life happen when you're not around. So it was pitched to me by one of my mentors 16 years ago. Mike, how do you stay on the mind of your account when you're gone? And it really is becoming memorable. So if you're gonna be memorable, are you gonna rush in, rush out? Are you gonna just say what you gotta say, spew all the features and benefits, and then you're gone? Or you're gonna have a thoughtful conversation where you connect with the other person, you bring them into your world, you eliminate whatever's happening around that person. Until I had heard that, I was just doing lots of activity. So my sales were growing, but it was at a pace that I could not keep up. I would wear myself out, I'd get exhausted, I would crash. It wasn't until I learned how to become memorable and stay on people's mind did people start reaching out to me. That was the big change was I was doing, I was reaching out to them, I was reaching out to them, I was reaching out to them. Then all of a sudden, people start reaching out to me. Hey, let's meet. I want to talk about XYZ, let's meet. Hey, you know, I really need your help with XYZ. I get phone calls. I need your help. Hey, you said you know, you said you can do this. I was wondering if you could do this. Shoot, I still get calls. I haven't been out in the field since 2021. I still get calls from offices. I got a call about a month ago. Said, hey, we want to have a we want to sit down and have a meeting about uh one of the products that I used to I used to have. And I called the office back and I said, well, I I actually don't even know if there's a sales team in the United States for that product anymore. I don't know. Um the company was out of Switzerland and the the sales director, the director of sales that I knew passed away. So I I don't I don't I have no affiliation with the company. I don't I don't know. I'm sorry. You know, you might want to call whatever numbers on the website. So Q4, if you if you're looking to make this the best quarter of your career, let's chat. I might be able to help. Mike at survivingoutsides.com or reach out to me on LinkedIn. Uh redoing all my websites. So my websites, uh I'll have a link for my websites later, but I'm working on my websites, slow, slow but sure, slow and steady, wins the race, they say. And so uh they're not quite done yet, but um, they will be shortly. But yeah, just reach out to me, email me, or LinkedIn's the best, connect with me on LinkedIn, and just say, hey, I'd love to have a strategy call. Just listen to the Q4 episode, and uh we'll go from there and we'll set you up for success in Q4 and beyond. Um appreciate everybody who's been listening. It was another big week of downloads, which absolutely still blows my mind because I I have not been able to record and put out new episodes frequently, but I do appreciate everybody who's listening. There's a lot of new listeners out there. So um it was actually, I think it was the fifth biggest week of downloads in the history of the show, which is crazy to me. I absolutely love it. It just means that people are searching for this, they're seeking for it. So if you're listening to this right now, you're not alone. Share this with a friend, share this episode with a friend, talk about your Q4 plans with other people. And if you need guidance on that, um, or you're a lone wolf or you don't have anybody to chat with, uh, reach out to me and I can help guide you and get clarity for Q4 to the best uh the best quarter of your career with the most commission dollars, so that in January, February, you'll get those commission dollars and you'll be grinning from ear to ear. If that sounds like you, let's chat. Like at Surviving Outside Sales. Hope everybody has a great start to their Q4 and uh we'll see you next time. Cheers.