8/30/2024-Q4 is over only if you say so

Labor Day, Halloween, then Thanksgiving, and then poof…bye-bye Q4. The time to prepare for the fast lane of the calendar year is now, so get organized and be the one who looks chillax in Q4.

Calendar Q4 starts in just one month, but your Q4 selling season has been going on for months.

Most of your Q4 business is likely booked, and you’ll be managing many transactional details in Q4. You fought hard for your Q4 revenue, and you need your execution to be tight in order to record all of it.

But is your Q4 truly closed?

Probably not. It’s not done until you’ve made the rounds and checked with every possible buyer who is a Q4 prospect.

You decide when Q4 is done. Late August is too early to make the call.

Ask your finance team to generate a report on how much Q4 ’23 business you booked on August 30 of last year.

Once you have that data, you can assign yourself a new goal for how you’re going to get as much as you can in the next few months.

Examine your list of current Q4 running money and strategize how you can get more. What solution can you present in September that might give them a reason to spend more?

Booking revenue is great! (Good job!) Keeping it on the books is even greater. For some, Q4 is already set; your revenue is either booked or about to be booked. And others are chasing a few incremental dollars that you know always appear.

Either way, there’s something nuts about Q4. Admit it, every year around Halloween you say the same thing, "Wow, this quarter is flying by…I’m running out of clock."

Labor Day comes, and you start watching a few football games; after that, you roll around in some leaves and decorate some pumpkins. Before ya know it, you’re singing "Auld Lang Syne" with a magnum of champagne (or diet Coke) in your hand!

In Q4, you’ll be competing for internal resources and attention. You’ll be competing for attention from your customers. And if you’re chasing incremental revenue from your running accounts, you’ll be competing with everyone else, asking them for the same.

Plan now.

Q4s are always busy, but hopefully yours won’t be as chaotic as this so-called baseball play courtesy of the San Francisco Giants and Los Angeles Dodgers. (WHAT A CIRCUS!)

No doubt you may think you’re prepped and ready to go for the final quarter, but take a cue from these players who never intended to look like bumbling amateurs.