Very short blog today. 

The odd decade or two ago, as a first line sales manager, I would expect my sales people to know everything that was going to happen to a deal that was closing in the current month. As we got to the last two weeks before close-date, I would expect them to have a detailed close plan, and would chide them, sometimes not so gently, if they didn't know the process, the plan, the people, and the issues.

Fanfare! So I want to place this on record.

I apologise to all those hard working reps to whom I gave a hard time.

I was sarcastic.

I was incredulous.

Sometimes I was dismissive.

Again, I apologise.

Here we are, two weeks away from Brexit, and we don't even know if we're two weeks away from Brexit!

If the Government, in its pomp, its majesty, as the final arbiter of the rule of law, as the seat of ultimate power where rules may be changed upon a whim...  If the actual freakin' United Kingdom Govt. doesn't know its own plan two weeks out, then we have to assume that with all the best wills in the world, a sales rep won't always know what his or her close plan is actually going to look like.  

There are times when things f*** up, and as a sales manager, the only way to cope with this is to find something extra in the pipeline and react. Commiserate with the rep. Try and learn something from the process. But include in the lesson that sometimes, sometimes, things f*** up.
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​Not much point talking about Brexit – far smarter minds have weighed in on the debacle and the English empty-headed political responses after the event. 
 
Suffice to say, while I’ve met a few great sales people and also personally closed some big wins, I’ve never met anyone yet who has signed a $2 trillion deal.
 
Yet that’s what the world’s financial markets had lost by Saturday morning, all due to Brexit.

Meanwhile, in the corporate world, many large tech firms close their FY16 books this week – in fact, June is the busiest fiscal end month after December for US-listed companies.
 
So this morning, many of my ex-colleagues will be on their last forecast call of the year - and most will be hearing unwelcome news.
 
Let’s face it, deals always fall out of the funnel at this time of year. And some of them were always aspirational rather than real, anyway. 

​Strategy, tactics and Monday sales meetings.
 
The alignment between strategy, tactics and Monday sales meetings is not always clearly understood.
 
We remember the difference between strategy & tactics – strategy defined as “doing the right things” while tactics is “doing things right.”
 
And when they meet – when you’re delivering the right things – you know. Everyone knows. And you all know pretty much immediately.
 
And that’s what Monday sales meetings are for – communicating how close to perfection you’re getting with regards to execution. They review tactical execution, not strategy.
 
In fact, if there’s just one topic to cover with the team each week, it would be this.