As you prepare for the New Year, a thought that should remain at the forefront of your revenue efforts is, "Do we have enough appointments to make our revenue number?"

Sales and executive management love to focus on closing sales - and rightfully so, if deals don't close, revenue has no chance of being recognized. But while all of the focus and attention is on closing deals and getting business "done" this month and quarter, our real emphasis should be on getting more appointments - more appointments than necessary to meet revenue expectations. If you don't get more appointments, you don't get more prospects, you don't get more sales, you don't get more revenue. It all begins with a continual, healthy, and ongoing pipeline of suspects...appointments.

While you're closing business this month, what about sales next month, and the month after, and the month after that? Without focused attention, effort, and action to get more appointments, you're likely to create peaks and valleys in your revenue - big revenue months followed by voids of significant sales.

Companies should have ongoing programs to create more and more appointments, creating more sales time with prospective customers, resulting is ongoing increases in their revenue. In future posts I'll highlight tips and techniques used to get more appointments, moving your sales from customer-Driven to company-driven.

For now, use the "down-time" of this holiday season to reflect on your number of appointments this past year and imagine the positive financial impact on your business of each sales person getting just one more quality appointment each week. The results can be staggering!

Does your business have enough apointments to grow?

Jim Logan