How far along are you towards reaching your sales goal for the year.  By July you should be close to 75%.  By September you should be at 90%.  Because selling new business in October and November to close before December 31st is very difficult.  Sure there will be orders and new business in the 4th quarter.  These sales should be a result of the hard work you’ve put in over the previous 9 months.  Ultimately you should be doing mid-year business meetings with all your clients to talk about how they are tracking to reach their sales goals.  Many business owners are so busy running the company, they don’t really know what needs to happen to close the year out on plan.  Spend the next 90 days working really hard to finish the year strong for yourself and helping your customers and clients finish the year strong with your support and effort to help them achieve their goals.  Then no later than November 1st, start doing end of year meetings with your clients to review the year and start discussions for planning for 2014.  People think I’m crazy when I tell them I’m starting to plan and think about 2014.    Well this blog is the very reason for that advance planning.  The time is now.