The Last 45 Days: How to Close Q4 Without Discounting | Donald C. Kelly - 2049

You’re behind on quota with a handful of weeks left in the year, and the easiest lever sitting in front of you is a discount. In this solo episode, I explain why that lever almost always costs more than it saves, and what I’m telling my own team to do instead in these last 45 days. Why Discounting Costs More Than the Discount Itself A 10% discount on a 40% gross margin sale cuts your profit per deal from $40 to $30, which means you need roughly a third more volume just to land where you started. Discounting at the finish line also raises an uncomfortable question for the buyer. It makes them wonder whether your original price was ever honest in the first place. A discount this year trains buyers to expect one next year too, which quietly resets their anchor price and makes full-price selling harder every quarter after this one. Clean Up Your Pipeline Before You Chase It A pipeline full of stale or unqualified deals makes your numbers look worse than they are and makes it impossible to plan your last 45 days with any accuracy. When a deal slips one to four weeks past its original close date, win rate falls by 34%, and once it slips more than a month, win rate drops even further. A deal that's slipped that far is close to unrecoverable in-quarter, so it belongs on next year's list, not on this week's call sheet. What to Actually Check in Every Deal Confirm there's a real compelling event driving urgency, since no amount of pressure from your side manufactures one that doesn't already exist. Identify every decision maker in the deal and make sure you have direct communication with each one, not just your single point of contact. Verify the budget is actually there right now, because a great champion with no funding isn't a Q4 deal, it's a Q1 conversation at best. Split Your Time 60/70 on What's Closing Now Spend roughly 60 to 70% of your remaining time on deals that are genuinely capable of closing this quarter, not the ones that merely feel close. The other 30 to 40% still goes toward building next year's pipeline, since Q1 shouldn't start from zero just because Q4 got intense. This isn't about abandoning anyone. It's about being honest with yourself about which deals have a real shot before the calendar runs out. Use the Buyer's Calendar, Not Just Your Own Many buyers are working with a use-it-or-lose-it budget tied to the calendar year, and that pressure can work in your favor if you ask about it directly. If a buyer can't commit to the full scope right now, structure a smaller entry now with room to expand next year, rather than letting the whole deal slide to January. Decision makers often disappear for the second half of December, so lock in their time now instead of trying to chase a signature while they're on vacation. Build a Mutual Action Plan A mutual action plan built backward from the close date keeps both sides aligned on exactly what has to happen and by when. Without one, the buyer doesn't know what's expected of them, and you're left guessing at where the deal actually stands. This document doesn't have to be complicated. A clear list of steps and owners, shared early, does most of the work on its own. This Week's Action Audit your full pipeline first. Confirm decision makers, budget, and a real compelling event exist on every deal still on your list. Pick your top five deals and build a mutual action plan for each one, using a tool like Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini to draft it quickly. Send that plan to each buyer this week, or set up a call to walk through it together, so everything is in motion well before the year runs out. "The end of the quarter scramble costs more deals than it closes." — Donald C. Kelly Leadership Advice, Books, and Quotes The core principle behind this episode is simple. Don't let the pressure of a deadline push you into a discount that trains your buyers and shrinks your margin. Audit your pipeline honestly, work the buyer's calendar instead of fighting it, and trade for value instead of giving it away. Resources Tell me which of these you're trying this quarter on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/donaldckelly or Instagram https://www.instagram.com/donaldckelly/. Learn more at The Sales Evangelist https://thesalesevangelist.com/. Sponsorship Offers This episode is brought to you in part by Hubspot. With HubSpot sales hubs, your data tools and teams join a single platform to close deals and turn prospects into pipelines. Try it for yourself athttps://www.hubspot.com/products/saleshubspot.com/sales https://www.hubspot.com/products/sales. This episode is brought to you in part by LinkedIn. Are you tired of prospective clients not responding to your emails? Sign up for a free 60-day trial of LinkedIn Sales Navigator athttps://business.linkedin.com/sales-solutions/cx/20/09/sales-navigator-podcast?src=re-pod&trk=tse&veh=tse&mcid=6897323946090332160linkedin.com/tse https://business.linkedin.com/sales-solutions/cx/20/09/sales-navigator-podcast?src=re-pod&trk=tse&veh=tse&mcid=6897323946090332160. This episode is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Foundation. Improve your connection on LinkedIn and land three or five appointments with our LinkedIn prospecting course. Go to thehttps://tsesales.typeform.com/to/UCMfjZbXsalesevangelist.com/linkedin https://tsesales.typeform.com/to/UCMfjZbX. Credits As one of our podcast listeners, we value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here:thesalesevangelist.com/survey http://thesalesevangelist.com/survey. https://tsesales.typeform.com/to/lc5yAa8P We’d love for you to join us for our next episodes by tuning in onApple Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-sales-evangelist/id788738885,Google Podcast https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cDovL3RoZXNhbGVzZXZhbmdlbGlzdC5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw?sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj5kaXI3Pj2AhVKcjABHW5PDVwQ9sEGegQIARAC,Stitcher https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-sales-evangelist-sales-trainingspeakingbusiness-marketingdonald, orSpotify https://open.spotify.com/show/1NjzsFjQwVrgboUfDvbzd5?si=LdQOJDc1T-WBPMxr1h3RsA. Audio provided byFree SFX, https://freesfx.co.uk/Soundstripe https://soundstripe.com/, andBensound http://www.bensound.com/. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and produced by Brightseed and Hill.

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  It's the end of October right now. You're trying to close out the quarter and the year, and your numbers aren't quite there. What do you do? What's gonna best help you to hit your numbers? Today, I'm gonna give you some ideas of things you should do and some things you should stay clear of. Check it out.

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  Hey, hey, hey, everyone. Welcome to another great episode of the Sales Evangelist Podcast. I'm your host, Donald C. Kelly, the Sales Evangelist. And I'm so excited for another great episode. I'm so excited to be here with you today. On this episode, we're gonna be talking about this, the last 45 days before the quarter ends. What are you doing to win right now? What are some of the things hindering you from winning? If this is your first time listening to our podcast, watching one of our videos, I appreciate you, and I encourage you to subscribe. If you haven't done so already, share this episode with somebody else. If you've been listening for a minute, I appreciate that. The show is designed to be able to help you not only to be able to find the right people and build pipeline, but also to accelerate deals through your pipeline faster. I'm giving you things that's worked for us, some of the things that we have overcome, and hopefully these can help you out as well.

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  The first thing I want to tag into, I want to give you some data here, and I want to share this with you. Like, I mean, think about it right now. You're gonna be tempted at the end of this quarter, end of this month, you're gonna be tempted to discount anything you have. And you just be in a reality of the situation is December, you really have like really two months of work. In November, you probably have two months, maybe, I mean, sorry. December, you have like two weeks of work. November, you probably have like two and a half weeks because the week of Thanksgiving is gone. And in the week after, people are traveling back and getting back into the mode. So you have the first two weeks of November, the first two weeks of December, pretty much. And October, we have like a few days left. So you're looking at this a short window. What can I do during that time? But discount is the first thing that comes to mind. But let me give you some stats.

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  I want to share this with you first before you get tempted, right? Before you get tempted to discount your pipeline, everything in the discount, here's what I need you to understand. To keep at quarter end, reps close two-point times more deals than they do during the typical stretch of a month. But here's what happens. But they lose 11.4 times more deals in that same window. The end of the quarter scramble costs more deals than it actually loses. So I want you to really understand that when you start discounting. So here's a problem with discounting that you need to understand. Like, the math just doesn't quite work. You can't discount everybody because what it tells us as a customer is like, was that number you gave me at the front any good? Were you just deceiving me?

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  Were you just trying to get one off on top of me, you know, on me by having this inflated price at the beginning? So for a company with 40% gross margin, $100 sale generates $40 gross profit, right? And offsetting a 10% means you're increasing volume by roughly 33% just to earn the same gross profit. So when it's all said and done, discounting is not necessarily going to be able to help you. So that 10% discount doesn't cost you 10%. You need a third more deals just to be able to break even because you're looking at the profit margin that you're getting at this point. You're cutting yourself short. And if your commission is based on that, you're not gonna make as much money.

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  So it also trains our buyers for the next year. If we keep doing the discount, the next year, the buyer's gonna come to us and the buyer's gonna say, well, last year, you gave me a discount at the end of the year, so I'm gonna wait for that. I saw this one of our clients, they do annual, these big holiday promotions. And we do it too, right? If when it comes to Black Friday, many of us are not gonna buy some of those big tech things until the end of the year because we know Black Friday is coming up, and we know Christmas is coming up and Cyber Monday, so we can get some of those deals at that point. Some of the businesses do need to check this on Amazon. Sometimes they inflate the price during that time period, and you think you're getting a discount, but you're actually getting the same price. I've seen this on some, not all Amazon stores do this, but some people I've seen do that. But you gotta think about that. But a point I'm trying to make is that buyers sometimes get preconditioned that they're gonna get a discount,

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  and they're gonna wait for that discount, and it impacts the way that you sell throughout the year. So we don't want to do that.

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  The second thing I would tell you, so first thing is not to discount. The second thing I'll tell you is that you gotta clean up your pipeline. Oftentimes, we have tons of data and tons of deals in our pipeline. I went through yesterday, and I looked at some of the deals that we have, and I just started cutting things out that wasn't a fit. My numbers look better, it's healthier, and now I know where I can really go because I can make a plan according to this because the data that I had was not right. So here's one of the data that I found, though. When deals slip one to four weeks past the close date, win rate falls 34%. The other thing that I want you to understand is that when the deal slipped for more than a month past the initial close date, win rate falls a further 67%. So this is like almost impossible to resurrect. As you go through each deal in your pipeline, several things I want you to look at.

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  I want you to look at, one, what are the compelling events in that deal? Two, the decision makers, are they a part of that deal? Who are they? And do you have communication with them? Are you multi-threaded? Three, do they have the budget? Because right now, that's reality. If they don't have the budget, you don't have the people to say yes. And if they don't have a compelling event, no matter how much you try to fabricate it, it's not gonna happen. So you gotta look at how we can make that happen. I want you to focus on the deals that are actually capable of closing. I know that might sound crazy, and not that you're being a lunatic, or you're not that you're being irresponsible, but we need to focus on the deals that are closing now. In the new year, we can look at the other ones. But right now, it's the deals that are closing that we need to be able to spend our time focusing on and help to close. And yes, you do need to spend time for the new deals for the next year. But your majority of your time, if you're trying to close out the quarter strong,

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  probably should probably do about a 60, 70 amount on those deals that are closing now, 30 on the deals to prepare for the Q1 of next year. The next thing I want you to understand is that use the buyer's calendar. I want you to understand this, is that use it or lose it budget. Many of your clients have budgets that they need to spend by the end of the year because it may be the calendar year. And if they don't use it, they're gonna lose it. So maybe your service can, is it possible for your deal to be adjusted? So the person can pay some money to get in now, and they can pay more in the new year? If you can get them in and start using it, this may be able to be a better impact for you right now. So you have something that you're working with, rather than just saying, well, you can't afford it, so we're gonna push this off to the next year or push it off to later.

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  Get what you can now with the money that they have, and then you can look at improving in the next year or ramp them up more. So if you sell licenses for a software, maybe they come in and they buy enough for their department now, and then for the rest of the organization next year with more money. But instead of waiting next year, well, you have the chances of they may spend that money on something else. Two, things may change. Three, world event may change. There's so many factors that could impact that. Four, this person may get fired or move to another department. So there's so many things, but get it now so you can get in and you're a vendor, and then you can improve and go from there. The other thing I want you to understand when it comes to the buyer's calendar is that your decision makers may be out the second half of December.

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  So if that's the case, you want to get that now rather than trying to chase them down on vacation to get them to sign a deal or to approve something. Build a mutual action plan, a mutual close plan that works backwards from the deadline. I am a big fan of mutual action plans, and I encourage you to be able to have those built into your organization. If you don't have a mutual action plan into your deals, the buyer doesn't know what's happening, and you don't necessarily know what's happening. So you want to make sure that you're all on the same page and you're aligned. And especially if you're working backwards from that deadline, it makes a big difference.

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  So in 2019, one of our clients saw what we did and asked, could we do that for them? We experimented with it, and we started a podcast production agency. Now we create podcasts for some of the biggest brands in the world, and it's amazing. I would love to show you and your team how we can create podcasts for you and use it as an entertaining source, but also educational and a lead generation. If you're interested, go to bluemangostudios.com. Again, bluemangostudios.com, and our team can show you exactly what we did. It's amazing.

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  Number four, I want you to do this. Trade, don't give up. This is important when it comes to closing up the quarter. Sometimes we might find that sellers might say, I want to give, I'm going to, again, discount, or I'm going to give all this stuff up. But trade, what if you did something like this? If I can do this for you, can you do this for me? Ask for a longer term, for example, or a case study, or a signature by a set date. When you do this, it works. I've done this, and I've encouraged clients to do this as well, and it works. But especially the longer term. One of my clients, they were working with another vendor, the software company, and they wanted to get some ask. And the software company, they held their ground, but they said, hey, you can get this if you were to extend your contract. No, if you could pay it all up for the year now,

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  rather than paying it out for the next 12 months. Cash in hand for the better for the company, right? But that was interesting. It was a fascinating concept. I mean, it's simple, but they saw the opportunity now rather than waiting for later. But instead of them saying, hey, we'll give you access to all these features, they got what they wanted now, and the client got what they needed as well with the added features. So that's one thing you could look at. Just don't give up trade for opportunities. And maybe you could trade for referrals or introductions, so forth. And I've done that one, too. The last one is the action for this week that I want you to do. I want you to do this. I want you to audit your pipeline. The first thing I want you to do is audit that pipeline, look at it, and see, do you have decision makers on board? Do you have the budget?

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  Do you have a compelling event for any of these deals? Pick your top five deals and then send each of them a close plan. And you can tell them you want to work with them with this mutual action plan. You can build it out yourself, use Claude or Chat or whatever tool you have, Gemini. And then you can share this with them so they can see it and get the write-off on it. Ask, and they can use that as something, get started. Or you can set up an appointment with them and go through that plan so you can ensure that you have everything ready by the end of the year when you're going to hit that close by December. These are some simple things that you can do, and they have worked for me and worked for our clients, and I encourage you to check them out. I would love for you to message me and tell me which one of these things that you've tried are you going to use. You can find me on LinkedIn, Donald C. Kelly. You can find me on Instagram, Donald C. Kelly.

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  I'm spending more time on there, on Instagram as well as LinkedIn. So find me on those two places, or you can find me on Facebook at The Sales Evangelist. Listen, I want you to thrive. I want you to succeed. But most importantly, I want you to raise your level of thinking. I want you to go out. I want you to do big things. See you on the next one.

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  The Sales Evangelist Podcast is created by the Sales Evangelist Sales Training Organization. It is produced by TSC Studios. Our podcast production manager is Nancy Paul. Our audio engineer is Jershun Obayal. Our video engineer is DeSahn Kunado. Guest management is done by Jill Vito and Kristi Virtus. Our content writer is Carlisa Galberith. Our graphic designer is Yurvish Savalia. And I'm your host and executive producer, Donald C. Kelly.

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  Sales Podcast Network.