Celebrate

Hey, Scott from The Sales Mastermind here. Today’s edition only takes 3 minutes.

Today, we're covering:

• Millions
• Celebrate
• Ideas to celebrate
• My Celebration

Millions

This week, one of my coachees was talking about a stalled deal.

Her sales team member was struggling to get an expansion deal moving.

My coachee (the CEO) decided to lead a meeting with the client's senior leadership.

During this meeting, the client decision-maker pushed her team:

"Let's do this company-wide. I don't care about the other department. Make it happen."

It was signed, sealed, and delivered four days before this coaching session.

The contract value ended up being $USD5,000,000 !?!?!

Five Million Dollars.

Before my coachee had a chance to speak, I interrupted:

"Five million? And it's closed? Incredible!
Before we go further, how do you celebrate closing big deals?"

My coachee was befuddled:

"We are only 80% to the goal for the year, so I haven't."

She is like too many of the founders I work with.

They are stuck on the coal face and forget to celebrate when miracles happen.

We ended the session with an agreement that my coachee had to celebrate over the weekend.

Because if you can't celebrate a multimillion-dollar deal closing, what else is there??

Celebrate

Founders are there from the beginning. You're the ones who have to answer the phone when the bank calls.

Often, the founder puts in another 10-20-100k when the business needs an injection to make payroll.

And the early wins feel so minor that most founders never develop the muscle to celebrate their successes. It feels weird celebrating a $100 a month software sale or even a 20k deal when the bills to run the place at 50k a month.

But this skill, the ability to take a moment and celebrate your wins, serves a vital purpose.

Every time you celebrate, you mentally and emotionally draw a line in the sand that you're winning.

If you don't celebrate, business can feel like a never-ending spiral of fires.

Don't celebrate everything. Find the level that gets you excited.

Some good examples:

• Anytime a deal more than three times the average closes
• The day in the month/quarter/year your revenue covers expenses.
• Key anniversaries like founding the business, the first paying customer, or the first hire.

Pick a few criteria and start the celebration.

There are infinite things to celebrate, and I guarantee you won't over-celebrate, as founders rarely can.

Examples

Most of my coachees are bad celebrators. It becomes one of the activities I push them to do.

Some real-life examples from my customers are:

• One of my clients is a runner, and it's a real struggle for him to get enough time to do a long run (10km plus). So when he has a real win, he goes for a long run.
• Another client loves hats. So she visits a specialist hat store and goes wild.
• The final client is all about fine dining with friends. So he picks a high-end restaurant and invites ~3 friends to eat and drink the night away.

It's key to understand that this celebration is for you. Make it something you will enjoy and something you want to do more often.

To celebrate 52 editions

My hobby is collecting, painting, and playing miniature wargames. My current favorite is Conquest: The Last Argument of Kings, and I will celebrate by buying my second Apex Predator.

It's a plastic T-Rex. 5' tall, 12' long and comes unassembled and unpainted.

Wrap Up

Fifty-two editions; that's a whole YEAR of writing every week.

I want to thank you, the reader. Some of you are friends, a few are family, many are current/past clients, and many more are people I've yet to meet directly.

Thank you!!

Looking forward to the next 52.

Remember, if you have a few deals on the edge and you just aren't sure what it takes to close them, enter to win a (free) Pipeline Review by clicking here.

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