Read time: 3 mins

If you’ve ever been an SDR in December you know it’s hard to hit quota. If you haven’t, well, you’re about to find out just how tough it is.

It’s hard because realistically you have 2-3 weeks (max) in December to hit your quota before everyone shuts down for the holiday season.

Couple that with the fact most of your buyers aren’t interested in starting new projects until the new year and you have a recipe for failure before you’ve started.

The problem you’re facing is most businesses don’t factor December into SDR targets so you’ll likely still be running at your full quota.

Basically, you’re up against it….but there’s hope.

In this newsletter, I’ll outline some tactics you can start using today to book more meetings in December and hit your quota.

Let’s dive in.

Tactic 1: Review Closed Lost Deals

This is an all-time classic but most people do it wrong.

Instead of collecting as many closed lost deals as possible and trying to re-engage them all, review WHY those deals were lost.

Around 30% of all closed lost deals are due to timing being off, you should aim to find those accounts and prioritise them so they get your BEST outreach.

Remember, when times get hard you need to first double down on how good and focused your list is THEN double down on how good your message is.

I’d rather you spend 3x as much time on the 30% who may be in the market than give 70% of your effort on people who won’t be.

Use closed lost as an easy way to refine your list and focus.

Tactic 2: Review WHO bought from you this year

I don’t know anyone who does this apart from my old SDR teams and it always served us well so I’m sharing it here.

To set the scene a lot of your target accounts will have left over budget and can make decisions faster than you may think.

Why? Because it’s the end of the year. There is a natural urgency there. The challenge is making sure you leverage it correctly.

To unlock this you’re going to need to triple down on decision makers.

No, I don’t mean send them 3x the amount of automated emails but spend 3x as long on making sure your messaging is AMAZING.

Instead of taking your list of accounts and trying to go ‘wider’ in the account, you’re going to need to go ‘deeper’ with high-power individuals to engage them.

Go straight to the budget holder and make them an offer they can’t refuse.

Tactic 3: Double Your Effort

Most sales managers will lean heavily on this with comments like ‘do more activity’.

Whilst I disagree with managers that lean only on this as a tactic the maths makes sense.

If you only have 2 weeks to realistically book new meetings you’re going to need to do it twice (and that’s if your conversion rates stay the same).

For example, if you do 300 calls a week and book 3 meetings, that’s a 1% conversion from call to meeting. In June you do that for 4 weeks and get 12 meetings.

If you do the same thing for December you’ll only end up with 6 meetings in the 2 weeks of work.

Factoring in effort is always important in sales, it’s just about how clever you are with the inputs you lean on.

Tactic 4: Factor in Higher ‘‘No-Shows’’

A lot of your buyers are thinking about wrapping up the year and all their existing projects.

They aren’t thinking about next year (yet).

This means all their existing ongoing projects will be prioritised in their calendars leading to higher no-shows and for ‘‘early stage’’ projects.

To counter this (and it will happen), make sure you know your conversion rates % for meetings to be attended and meetings attended to qualified.

Now factor in a 20% lower rate to both to account for end-of-year no-shows and you will know what your December conversion rate will likely look like.

For example; if your conversion from meeting booked to attended is normally 90%, expect 70%.

By factoring in risk you can 1. Manage your manager’s expectations of your performance 2. Manage your inputs in tactic 3 accordingly.

Tactic 5:Leverage Your Internal Resources

This is what sets great SDRs out from good ones.

Great SDRs know they can leverage more than just their own effort and input. They know other team members can help.

The question is HOW?

The most successful campaign I ever ran in December was this (please steal it):

1. SDR chooses 10 prospects (must be above the power line and at ICP accounts)

2. SDR writes a mini 9-step sequence (3 emails, 3 LinkedIn messages, 3 calls)

3. All steps are ‘‘hyper’’ personalised

4. C-suite send pre-written messages from their email and social accounts

5. SDR makes the calls

Most SDRs and SDR teams fail because they aren’t able to leverage their internal resources.

The most powerful resource you have is C-suite, so leverage them as much as you can without giving them lots of extra work to do.

Quick Summary:

December is REALLY hard but it’s not impossible to hit your quota.

Use these 5 tactics to beat it and end the year on a high:

1. Review closed lost deals

2. Review who bought from you

3. Double your inputs

4. Factor in risk of no-shows

5. Leverage your resources

This Week’s Action Steps:

1. Review closed lost and who buys from you

2. Add those people to your ‘‘December targets’’ list

3. Commit to your new inputs and factor in risk

4. Build a ‘‘December sequence’’ to leverage your resources

5. Execute with a laser focus

Good luck folks, lets go get it.

Masterclass Recording:

Last week, I ran my second FREE masterclass on ‘‘How to get promoted to AE’’.

If you’re interested in getting promoted or learning how you can land a role in full cycle sales in 2024 this ones for you:

Heres the link and the passcode is: 7n9@0$nW

So you know I will continue to run my free masterclasses every month in 2024.

Respond to this email to let me know what you’d like me to cover?

Weekly Send-Off:

I hope you all have a great weekend, here’s my tweet of the week (its applicable to ANYTHING):

Until next Friday at 1.05pm, au revoir from me, Bridge, and Isaac 🙂

Whenever you’re ready, here are 2 ways I can help you:

—> SDR Leader Bootcamp - The next leader bootcamp will be in January. Join 50+ others and save your seat here.

—> SDR>AE Skills Bootcamp - The next bootcamp will be in January. Join 80+ others and save your seat.