How to Tackle the 2nd Half of the Year

Sales Is Leadership—Here’s Why Your Daily Checklist to Prepare to Pr...

How to Tackle the 2nd Half of the Year

The second half of the year is well under way.

The Score is 0-0

That’s right. It doesn’t matter what your first half looked like—good, bad, or somewhere in between. Today, we reset. The score is zero to zero, and we’ve got a fresh start.

Here’s the deal: take a deep assessment of the activities you’ve done so far. Be honest. What worked? What didn’t? And most importantly—what’s the one thing that moved the needle?

Your Customers Don’t Care About Your Quota

I don’t care how close or far you are from your number—your customer doesn’t care. Buyers want solutions, not your sales goals.

So stop chasing numbers for the sake of numbers. Start solving problems.

Learn From a Champion: Tom Osborne’s 7 Metrics

Let me take you to the football field for a second.

Tom Osborne, legendary coach of the Nebraska Cornhuskers, told me something that’s stuck with me for years: he rarely looked at the scoreboard. Instead, he focused on seven core metrics—across offense, defense, and special teams.

Why? Because if those metrics were working, the score would take care of itself.

Now apply that to sales. It’s not about chasing the win. It’s about mastering the plays—the phone calls, the emails, the conversations. Your scoreboard (aka your number) will follow.

What’s Your One Metric?

This is what I want you to figure out. For me, it’s five conversations a day. That’s it. Five conversations with people who can buy from me, refer me, or have already bought from me.

Not five emails. Not five meetings. Five real conversations.

Some days I hit five. Some days I don’t. But I know the closer I get, the more success I see.

→ Read Overcoming the Barriers to Closing More Sales.

Don’t Dilute Your Focus

Sales leaders, listen up—don’t overwhelm your team with too many KPIs.

Back when I ran corporate sales teams, we’d roll out 15–20 different goals per quarter. Total overload. Everyone got distracted, and performance suffered.

We had to go back, simplify, and say: “These three are major. The rest are minor.”

Focus drives results. Simplicity wins.

Real Sales Teams, Real Metrics

I’ve worked with teams where the one metric was simple: qualify the lead. That’s it. Move a contact from suspect to prospect. Once qualified, their close rate jumped to 80%.

Another team? Their metric was closing at full price—because discounts were killing their margins. So we adjusted the entire process to support that one goal.

When your team gets focused, they get results.

Stop Chasing Everyone Else’s Success

Quick story: I followed a rabbit trail on LinkedIn the other day. I found someone with way more followers than me. For a moment, I got distracted—envious even.

But then I remembered: comparison is a distraction. My job is to focus on my game.

Stay in your lane. Stay focused. Your one metric matters more than their 10,000 followers.

From the Gym to the CRM

Ten years ago, I got back into the gym. The reps were hard. The weights were heavy.

But now? The workouts I struggled with back then are easy. Why? Because small consistent action leads to massive results over time.

It’s the same in sales. You don’t have to conquer the world today. Start small. One conversation. One email. Then build.

Set your number low. Achieve it. Celebrate. Then grow it. Success builds momentum.

Time Blocking: Protect the Metric

You’ve got a million things on your plate. So do I.

That’s why I live by my calendar. I time block everything—including those five conversations a day. If you don’t schedule it, it won’t happen.

Don’t let busy work crowd out the work that matters.

Start the Second Half Strong

Here’s your action plan:

Break down your sales process.
Identify your one metric.
Set a realistic, achievable goal.
Block time to do it.
Repeat, adjust, grow.

This isn’t about perfection. It’s about progress.

What Tools Do I Use?

Someone asked me during the live session what I use to track KPIs.

Simple answer: my CRM. I live in it. If you’re struggling, the first question I’ll ask you is, “Is your CRM open right now?”

Track it. Measure it. Improve it.