How Robust Is Your Q1 Pipeline? [September Referral Selling Insights]

Q4 has now begun, which means it’s time to build your sales pipeline for Q1. I know what you’re thinking: “Hold on, Joanne, that’s not how it works.”
Yep, it’s counterintuitive, but Q4 is 25 percent about closing business for this year and 75 percent about building business for next year.  If you make the mistake of being 100 percent heads-down getting deals done, you won’t have qualified leads in your pipeline for next year. Sure, marketing will toss you some names after the holidays, but those aren’t leads you can count on.
Tough, right? You have increased pressure to get revenue in the door before year-end. Every sales meeting is about closing deals—who are the influencers, who knows whom, what have we missed, what do we need to do to get this deal done? It’s a sprint to the end, when we should have started walking a marathon months ago. (I