Do you create a strategy to support you manage your pipeline and opportunities around end of financial year?
In this episode, I share my first financial year challenges and lessons learned and why I chose to never take leave again during that time!
I highlight the importance of understanding clients' buying cycles and budgeting processes, plus why, and how sales professionals need to align their strategies with clients' timelines and priorities, offering insights into planning leave and optimising sales opportunities throughout the year.
Dive into the significance of fostering client relationships and providing value beyond sales targets, ultimately guiding how you can approach end-of-year sales with a customer-centric mindset.
Tune in for actionable tips on navigating the complexities of end-of-year sales cycles and maximising opportunities for success.
If you enjoyed this episode leave us a 5 star review and help us reach more listeners around the world!
Do you create a strategy to support you manage your pipeline and opportunities around end of financial year?
In this episode, I share my first financial year challenges and lessons learned and why I chose to never take leave again during that time!
I highlight the importance of understanding clients' buying cycles and budgeting processes, plus why, and how sales professionals need to align their strategies with clients' timelines and priorities, offering insights into planning leave and optimising sales opportunities throughout the year.
Dive into the significance of fostering client relationships and providing value beyond sales targets, ultimately guiding how you can approach end-of-year sales with a customer-centric mindset.
Tune in for actionable tips on navigating the complexities of end-of-year sales cycles and maximising opportunities for success.
If you enjoyed this episode leave us a 5 star review and help us reach more listeners around the world!
Thanks + Happy Selling
Hello and welcome back to the Sell Like You podcast with me, Harriet Mellor. And today's episode, I'm going to start off by taking you on a little journey back through to my tech sales days in Australia. I was in tech sales in the UK. But when I moved to Australia, I started to build out my network and to really leverage the relationships that I could find using cold calling, but also LinkedIn. And the story I want to share more specifically is around the end of financial year, because we are approaching that in Australia, our financial year runs until the end of June. And I am recording this at the end of March. So we've still got three months ahead of us. And the reason why I want to bring this or share this story with you today is because it's something that I had to learn when I first moved to Australia, which was over nine years ago. But it was also relevant to many different industries that I work with today. but also still relevant in our sales world and things that we need to consider at different times throughout the year. And today's going to be about focusing on that end of financial year. So whether this is for you in Australia, whether you are listening anywhere else in the world, you can approach this when it's your financial year or plan for maybe holidays or taking a long period of time off as well. So let's dive in with that story. So as I mentioned, I came to Australia over nine years ago. I have... been in tech sales for majority of my career. And I had joined this organization, it was my second year in Australia, and I was in full in tech sales. I was selling and dealing with all of these different vendors and building a really strong pipeline. It was my birthday and I wanted to go to America for four weeks. So I took four weeks off in the middle of the year and went to New York, went to California, lived my best life. little did I know or realize at the time that June was the worst, the worst time to take off in Australia because the majority of my clients at that point were schools. I was dealing with private schools and that was the time when they wanted to spend their budget. As it turned out, it was for many different industries as well. Wrapping up budget, planning for the next financial year, pushing things into the financial year whilst delivering you know, hardware and software in this financial year, we did whatever it took to get that across the line. And being away in June in America meant that my holiday was not super relaxing or I wasn't able to really fully switch off. And I still had a great time, caveat. And we also had a great team in Perth that was able to support, you know, me being off. But safe to say, I never took a June off again in that career. It's something that still sticks with me. So when it comes to June and I think about taking leave, I'm like, really? I'm not sure. Now we have clients all over the world. So again, our challenges have changed in terms of where the end of financial year sits. No one really cares about that. For the people that I'm speaking to, but essentially for you, if you're in tech, if you're in the tech industry or whatever industry you're in, if you're in a place where people are spending money and end of financial year comes and there's an opportunity to spend the rest of the budget, for whatever it is that you are offering, all set forth in the plan for the new financial year, we need to take into consideration how our prospects or how our clients are buying, how are they budgeting, how are they making decisions. Because when we understand that, and again, we want to understand that really early on in our relationship, is that how do they buy, who makes those decisions? when is a compelling time for them to make a purchase so that other salespeople need to manage our time, our holidays, our leave, our plans throughout the year so that we can support our customers. Because ultimately that's what we are there to do. And so if you are planning on taking leave around times or periods of that, we know that we need a team to be able to support us within that. We also need to be mindful that if we are also taking leave, I also believe that this comes into the same place that we need to forecast ahead, make it relevant to our clients or to our prospects as to why we need to make a decision or why we need to take action, but how we can bring that in. So what am I talking about? Why am I talking about this? It's because if we don't ask the questions or understand their buying processes, where their budgets sit, where their financial year is relevant to them, or whether they are a calendar of the year, A lot of clients I worked with, especially again, we reference schools, is that they didn't work to a financial year budget. They worked to a January to December budget. But I knew that in January, they were spending up their first half of the year budget so that they could take it over or plan what was going to happen in the second half. So for them, it was very relevant. For the other industries I was working with, again, very relevant because they had budget that they had to spend, especially local governments, because they have to spend it, otherwise they don't get it again. So we'd have to come up with ideas of things or projects of things that they may need to purchase within the next six to 12 months so that we could provide them with a compelling reason as to why to act now. But so we could support them in achieving what's going to support them within their organization, ultimately achieving them in looking good. That was my number one job. Help you as the IT manager, CIO, and strategic person within that organization to look good. And I believe that that's what we do. in any stream of selling, regardless of industry. And so if you're listening to this now, you are approaching any financial year, regardless of what time of year you're listening to this podcast, think about what we need to understand. How can we help our customers or our prospects if we understand and have this information to hand? What can we do with it? And then how do we make it a compelling reason to meet or to discuss budget or to discuss plans? without making it all about the sale because we need to get the sale because I've got a target to hit before the end of financial year. Okay? And so when we do that in a really succinct way, in a really transparent way, we're able to connect with more of our ideal clients, connect with our clients on a different level, but come in from the perspective that we are holding their hand and we are on their side. And so I share this with a lot of the salespeople and teams that I teach. and coach is that we need to sit on the same side as our prospects, as our clients. We need to hold their hand through the journey that is the selling journey and beyond our into our account management journey so that we are there in the times that they need us. We are there in the times that are gonna have the biggest impact because ultimately our job is to support them in making a decision but also guiding them through decisions. They don't know what they don't know. So how can we educate them around that? Another area that comes up or comes to mind at this point is Chinese New Year in tech is big because a lot of our technology, a lot of our hardware, a lot of our purchases come from China. And so when the Chinese New Year is upon us, it's actually really difficult to get an order out. We need to be really mindful of closures. We need to be really mindful of when we can get things to our clients because if we don't tell them what's going on, and something changes, you are no longer in that driving seat with your client. You are behind the curve and they are going to find somebody else to support them who is ahead of the curve. Same thing for Christmas closures. Explain early on. Don't get it to the last week and be like, you need to place this order within the next five days, otherwise it's going to be January. Oh, and the price might go up. We need to be really mindful of how we are educating. But first we have to understand we educate. in alignment with where they're going and what their journey is. And then we offer support and they'll take that if that's the right thing for them. But if they don't know and if we don't tell them or share with them what is going to give them the best experience, what is going to give them the best outcome, they're not going to know. And so my tip for you for pre -end of financial year, again, I'm talking about this now because we're in Australia, we've got three months left for the end of financial year. Get to know your customers on a deeper level. Tell me about what you're trying to achieve before the end of financial year. Share with me what does your budget planning look like for the new financial year? Is there anything that you need to get done this financial year that maybe I can support you with or provide some guidance around? Knowing that your budget is up and we therefore then need to plan for the next financial year, out of interest, when do you do that? Is now a good time for us to do that? My clients tell me that now is a good time, so I thought I'd reach out. Share stories, share what you're doing with others and find out what makes them tick. Find out what's going to support them along their journey. And again, we can imply our end of financial year logic to end of year, to going on holiday or on leave, or they're going on holiday or leave. Think about compelling reasons throughout the year that may impact their price point, that may impact delivery, that may impact the service. And so therefore, if you want to do this with us, I need an answer by this date or we need to get moving by this date. We do the same thing in timelines. We can do the same thing in our year for end of financial year in ways that impact them as well as what impact us as salespeople or as organizations. If we want to use the organizational push where we know that we need to do something and it's not necessarily impactful for the customer, find a reason that makes it impactful for them. Come back to our WIFM, what's in it for me. Put ourselves in the shoes of our prospects or our clients and support them from the same standpoint. If you're watching me here on YouTube, you will see I'm using my hands a lot, but we sit on the same side of the table with our clients and our prospects because I am on your side. I can help you achieve great things. I need to understand a little bit more so that I can do that. I will be upfront. I will explain when things are going to change. I will be your guiding light. and we need to build trust to be able to get there. I hope that's helped you. I hope it's given you a few pointers and a few questions to go away and ask or think about before your next client meeting or before your next prospect meeting. As always, happy selling. I wish you an incredible week ahead. Let me know if this helped you, if you're going to take some action on it and what worked for you. And I look forward to being back in your ears soon on the Sell Like You podcast.