As we approach the end of the year, so many companies are pushing hard to cover the gap created by slower sales earlier in the year. While it is common for retailers to earn as much as 40% of their annual sales revenue during the holiday season, that does not need to be the case for other kinds of companies. If you are scrambling at the end of the year to cover a shortfall that has been building, you are doing something wrong.

A number of employees around Asia have been telling us about the mad dash they face in the 4th quarter to sign up new clients or renew those coming up on the end of their contracts. The problem they face is that, as the year has gone by, their companies have seen a growing gap between revenue projections and actual revenue. As time passes, the realize they will ultimately need to close this gap, and there is a sense that they’ll just have to push hard at the end of the year, trying to do in 3 months what they did not do in the previous 9. Does this make any sense at all?

Rather than waiting until the end of the year to come up with new ideas for services or new approaches to clients, do it earlier. Two elements of this include having a better sales & service plan during the year, and responding to shortfalls right away instead of waiting until the end of the year.

Having a strategy for capturing sales and providing quality service on a regular basis helps you be more proactive in your interaction with current and potential clients. It lets you plan out how you’re going to provide services so you are better able to have resources in place and rather than trying to rush your process with suddenly-imposed deadlines. Instead doing things “just good enough” during most of the year and then trying to recover at the end, put some serious thought into how you are going to provide the kind of service throughout the year so your clients’ contract renewal isn’t really in question, and your ability to attract new clients is maximized. Have some metrics in place so you can know if you are achieving your objectives, and be ready to adjust your plan if you’re not.

Most companies already have metrics in the form of quarterly revenue goals, but add something beyond that, because revenues might tell you the results but not the reasons. Those metrics might lead you to change your approach or do something different during the year, and that is the second part of all this: do what you need to do to fix problems during the year rather than waiting for December. If things are not working in March, there’s a good chance they still won’t be working a few months later; address them as they come up.

Balancing between a proactive approach and a willingness to respond to problems early gives you the best chance of meeting your goals by the end of the year. If you wait until that last quarter, you not only have people scrambling during the holidays – which no one wants – you also often end up making stuff up quickly without putting much thought into what you are actually offering, and in the end you may end up promising things you cannot really do or giving away for free some services you could have charged for. Do not wait until the last minute to make your business successful; try to make it successful all year long.