Is your year in? Will your pace to date get you where you need to be? Did the hot summer cause you to lose your stride? Is your pipeline empty or does it look like a loaf of stale bread? Does something need to change?

As you know, I talk to a lot of people. Talked to a guy last March that was gonna do me the honor of hiring me, but as it turns out, March was his best month ever. So, he didn't. He slipped a little in April and again in May. July was his worst month this year and August looks like it will be way worse than July.

What's worse? To be suffering through the peaks and valleys of a fluctuating pipeline? Prospect. Prospect. Prospect. Demo. Demo. Demo. Close. Close. Close. Oh crap! My pipeline is empty again. CEO's and founders know about this and their answer is to scale the sales force. Hire more bodies. As one salesperson's pipeline empties, another fills. Nothing wrong with that unless it's your pipeline that's empty.

Owner Ollies might dream of scaling, but many can't even get enough ahead to hire a salesperson, let alone scale a team. They Prospect. Prospect. Prospect. Demo. Demo. Demo. Close. Close. Close. Deliver. Deliver. Deliver. Oh crap! My pipeline is empty again.

Before you can fix it, you have to understand equilibrium. For a salesperson, the yellow is BizDev & prospecting and the green is everything else necessary to close a deal. Owner Ollie actually needs two graphs. One that compares Billable/Deliverable hours with BizDev/Sales hours and one like a salesperson that compares BizDev & prospecting to closing. Complicated? A little. Until you've done it.

Let me share two other things.

F=ma Overcoming inertia is really hard.

I offered a program 5 years ago that helped 50 salespeople up their game, turn things around or get themselves promoted. It's happening again. Check it out.