Time for a midyear review. Many of you are blaming slower sales on the summer and people being on vacation, or people not working on Fridays so they can take a long weekend. I refer to this as “summer whining.”

At the beginning of the year, you were given a big, fat quota. Your company may have softened the lexicon by calling it a “sales plan” or a goal. But the bottom line is: If you don’t meet it, you’re out.

BIG QUESTION: Are you halfway to your goal? Have you met your monthly objectives? Are your bosses ranting, “Sell more, sell more, sell more!”

Well, rather than me chastising you about what you did NOT do — like your boss is doing — why don’t I give you a few areas that you can look at, so that you might be able to end the year ahead of the milestones that were set for you at the beginning.

1. Look at your pipeline. How many potential sales do you have versus how many sales you need? If your closing ratio is three out of 10, your sales goal is $100,000 and your average sale is $30,000, then you need at least 12 solid potential sales (more like 15) to easily make your goal.

2. Look at your work ethic. Breakfast appointment? Lunch appointment? Three appointments with decision makers a day? The biggest key on the planet to increasing your sales is increasing the number of decision makers you sit in front of.

3. Earn more referrals. While everybody else is on vacation, you should be spending extra time building key relationships. Here’s the secret: Most salespeople fail to realize the value of providing value and converting it into great referrals. When you visit your customers to build relationships, understand that most of them don’t want to see you and don’t have time for you UNLESS there’s something in it for them. Think about your top 10 customers. Think about their two or three biggest needs (whether it involves your product or not). And think about how you may be able to get them information they need, or help them gain greater productivity or profit. That’s VALUE — and it has NOTHING to do with value-added (whatever that is).

3.5. Look at how you’re spending your early mornings and your late evenings. Your ability to invest time to read in the morning and prepare in the evening could be that extra edge that you need to make the marginal sale.

Yes, it’s hot outside. Yes, there’s a tendency to be a bit lazy. Yes, it’s easy to complain that things are slow. But I think it would be better if you looked at July as your halfway point. Selling has no season, unless you’re in retail. Even then, the reason Christmas is so important to retailers is because they don’t do a great job in the other 11 months.

The season for sales is today and tomorrow — regardless of the temperature, regardless of vacations and regardless of other people’s sense of urgency.

Review your first six months. Break down your numbers month by month. Then break them down week by week. It’s easy to make a graph of it. I wonder if there’s a pattern in your sales. I wonder if you push as hard at the beginning of the month as you do at the end of the month. I wonder if you even know what your sales patterns are.

If you’re looking to have a great second half, if you’re looking to get a sales award or get to the president’s club, or be the No. 1 salesperson on your team, now is the time to double your intensity. Now is the time to dig in and make big sales while your competition is on vacation. While your competition is slacking off. While your competition is whining about how slow things are.

Or, you could just slack off like they do. Start at 10, quit at 4. Take off Fridays. You know, “It’s summer.”

My recommendation is: Turn on the air conditioning and turn up the heat – of your sales intensity. It’s summertime, and the selling is easy.

If you want one KILLER idea that combines summer, leisure, fun, sales and relationships, go to www.gitomer.com, register if you are a first-time user, and enter the word SUMMER in the GitBit box.

Jeffrey Gitomer can be reached by phone at (704) 333-1112 or by e-mail at salesman@gitomer.com.

© 2006 Jeffrey H. Gitomer