Are You Ready for the End of the Fiscal Year?

By Chris Wiedemann, Consultant

Working for the U.S. public sector can be as challenging as doing business with a foreign government. Aside from its own rules, language, and culture, one of the public sector’s peculiarities is how its fiscal year comes to an end. The use-it-or-lose-it procurement cycle means four crazy weeks of September when sales teams are working day and night to close out their pipelines.

It’s a critical time for companies doing business in the public sector, especially in tech where as much as 40 percent of revenue is generated during the last weeks of the fiscal year. Read immixGroup co-founder Steve Charles’ tips for how to prepare for the end of the federal fiscal year in Washington Technology and Government Product News.

Here are some important things to remember:

• Realistically, most of your heavy lifting should already be complete. If your deals aren’t buttoned up by the end of July, you won’t be capturing any significant new business in September.
• There could be the chance to capture unused funds given that agencies need to spend their budget before Sept. 30. Unsolicited proposals for how your technology can solve one of their challenges could turn into a new last-minute deal. But this certainly isn’t the time to pursue a new customer. Only target where you already do a significant amount of business.
• And remember that it’s not business as usual from an operations standpoint. Your government customer will be working long hours and so should you. You don’t want to miss that late-night or weekend request. Since your sales teams will be working long hours, cater lunches and dinners. And make sure your company’s non-sales people know to support them in any way they can. That may mean a temporary ban on emailing anyone on the sales team until they can come up for air on Oct. 1.

Watch immixGroup co-founder Steve Charles give even more details on navigating the busy season. Need help navigating September and the other 11 months of the year? Reach out to immixGroup Market Intelligence today.