This newsletter is for founders and sales leaders who want to scale revenue faster.
In this weeks issue:
- Don't Waste the Last Week of the Month
- Life Advice from Hunter S. Thompson
- No more typing
- AI Search Engines
Now onto this week's newsletter:
Don't Waste the Last Week of the Month
Some of my favorite memories of running a sales team come from the last 5 days of the month.
When you’re running a high-velocity sales team inside a company growing 100% year over year, you’re living in rare air.
It might not feel that way, because you’re surrounded by other people doing the same thing. But don’t forget: this kind of growth isn’t normal. That’s what makes it fun.
And that’s what makes the last week of the month so much fun.
You get 12 "Super Bowls" a year. Every month is a new chance to pull together as a team, push hard, and create real momentum.
And if you are doing it right, you can manufacture velocity and momentum to finish out the month.
Here’s how...
- Make the targets public
Start this week by calling your shot with the sales team. Put the target on the wall and challenge each person on the team to deliver their number so that the team can achieve milestones.
Call out the team revenue target for the month. Put a list of individual rep quotas and what each person's attainment to plan is for the month.
Seek out individual personal records and put them on a watch list, this will come in handy throughout the week.
- Go Deal by Deal
Get out of spreadsheet mode and get real comfortable in your pipeline.
Open the pipeline and go one by one to make sure opportunities are set up for closing. Every “best case” and every “commit.”
Use a framework like my 4 Keys to Unlock a Deal to confirm what’s real, what’s missing, and where you can help.
Don’t rely on hope. Your job this week is to make sure nothing slips through the cracks.
- Celebrate Bright Spots
Use recognition to amplify momentum on your team.
Spot the milestones for the team and for each individual. When the team (or anyone on it) hits a milestone, make it a big deal!
Ring the bell. Share the wins. You want people to feel like they’re part of something special.
Celebrate things like:
- Company firsts ($400K month, $3M ARR, $10M ARR).
- Personal records (biggest month ever, first deal closed, lifetime $1M booked)
- Create Energy in the Room
If you’re in-office, get the team together. Get tacos delivered to the office.
Host a late-afternoon power hour to resurrect stale pipeline. Turn the music up. Get people focused and fired up.
When the energy is high, deals move faster.
Velocity is contagious.
The October Push
October is one of the best months in the sales calendar.
22 business days. No major holidays yet.
It’s your last full shot before Thanksgiving and the holiday slowdown.
And this year, the last day of the month is on a Friday. It's Halloween. People will be amped up to finish out there work and head into the weekend.
Lean into it.
Five business days left.
Five days to make magic happen.
Final Thought
I work with a lot of early-stage software companies, and here's what I see:
Growing 100% year over year is exceptionally rare.
You might think it’s normal because of what you see on LinkedIn or in your investor updates, but it’s not.
Most businesses never grow this fast.
So if you’re lucky enough to be in that small group, treat every end of month like it matters.
Don’t waste it.
Make it a moment.
What's got my attention right now:
- I recently came across an old bookmark and I re-read and I've been thinking about: Hunter S. Thompson’s Letter on Finding Your Purpose and Living a Meaningful Life. He was 22 years old when he wrote this letter. It's surprisingly wise for such a young man, and its full of excellent life advice for anyone between stages in their professional life.
- I'm not typing as much as I used to. I've been using AI all-day, every day like many of you. And I recently came across this app Wispr Flow that allows you to transcribe voice notes quickly. My habits have changed almost immediately since installing it. I find that I am typing much less and relying on dictation to interact with the different learning models.
- AI Search Engines are wild. Maybe I'm late to the game here, but the new ChatGPT Atlas is able to do things that I didn't even think were possible. I've been loyal to Chrome for the last decade, but I could see myself moving off of it completely in the near future.
That's it for this week. One more ask before you go: Can you please forward this email to one person that might find it useful?
Have a great week!
Martin
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