Don't y'all just love it when on August 19th you're $30k away from plan with $10k in your pipeline... As you should in this scenario, you project a loss - but an HIGHLY optimistic miss of about $3k off quota.
Not knowing where the hell you're going to find the missing $17k that allows you to still miss your mark, you double down on prospecting. You hit up your inside-the-base clients and you beg your net-new contacts to have a meeting with you, you fight bite and scratch for extra long hours over the next ten days, ignoring family, working LinkedIn SalesNav on the couch while you're supposed to be watching that rom-com with your hot wifey (which leads to you not getting any because you "weren't even present for date night"), so you decide to stay up late emailing every partner contact and CEO you have ever met trying to drum up the revenue you need.
One client responded to me at 2:33 23rd, "WTF are you doing trying to get me to meet with you at this time of night...must be a hell of a product for you to be so excited right now." In my sleep deprived state I definitely overused the exclamation points...but you know what? Fuck it - I got the meeting.
You keep pushing through the end of week 4, with just $1000 measly new sales bucks to add to your pathetic number...you double down on the, "I'm gonna just barely miss" lie. Even your manager knows you're lying at this point. You have grown your pipeline, but average velocity in your organization is 12-14 days so it's looking like you'll hit August's number on September 10th...no bueno.
So you do what anybody who loves to win does. You keep pushing on every contract out there and you get a little lucky over the weekend, pulling in a big one. Suddenly it's an outside chance that you could win in August. Over the whirlwind next three work days, you put in nearly $45k to finish the month as your team's number one rep, and in the top ten for your vertical within your organization....God, I love winning so much!
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