As we wind down 2025’s second selling quarter, we can check our performance versus our YTD quota to see exactly where we stand. That’s the beauty of selling and the pay-for-performance lifestyle, isn’t it? There’s no mystery about where you stand. Your YTD number is there in bright lights and it’s reflected not only in your compensation but in how you feel about yourself. And whether you are north or south of the 100% equator, 2025’s halfway point represents time that’s gone. Deals won and deals lost. Over and done. But most importantly, July 1 flips the calendar to six more months and the opportunity, regardless of your YTD number, to make things better. But to make things better, you have to be better. You must learn from H1’s failures and successes – yours and your organization’s, and improve.
In my sales consulting career, I often preach about the importance of recalibration at this time of year and I’ve written about it in previous articles as well because, simply put, it’s mission critical. Taking what happened in H1 and putting it to work in H2 is a must. And you already have the perfect vehicle to guide you. Remember that SWOT analysis you conducted on your territory to prepare for 2025? It’s filled with gems of wisdom and utter falsehoods. As such, it’s time to mine and scrub that dreary process that assessed those four well-known categories:
Strengths: The internal attributes, providing you with a clear advantage.
Weaknesses: The internal characteristics that create disadvantage and limit you in achieving your goals.
Opportunities: The positive external factors that increase your chances of success.
Threats: The negative external factors threatening your success and making you vulnerable.
Of course, you remember your 2025 SWOT process, don’t you? Maybe you’re lucky to be part of an enlightened organization that insured you integrate your SWOT findings into real action plans to guide your progress. Probably not, though. If your organization is like most, the SWOT findings were quickly forgotten as the focus was solely on breaking out of the January selling gate fast and strong. Those SWOT flipcharts and their valuable content were rubber-banded and stowed in the corner of the storage room, never again to see 2025’s light of day. You see them every time you use the copier.
But at the year’s halfway point, there’s still time. Time to maximize strengths, shore up weaknesses, take advantage of opportunities and minimize threats. But how do you go about recalibrating traditional SWOT? Actually, it’s not about doing that at all but about raising SWOT to a different and much more actionable level.
Start by grabbing those flip charts and reviewing your 2025 SWOT findings. Right or wrong, they’re your baseline. Those that were spot on and those that wildly missed the mark. Give them all a candid refresher, using H1’s lessons learned. You can’t get a redo on the last six months, but you can learn from them. History is a cruel but powerful teacher but you must work with it and not against it. Of course, you’ll identify new items that didn’t come up previously but your earlier work will save you lots of time. And, full disclosure, if you never did conduct a 2025 SWOT session, now is the time to do it. Not, though, through traditional, passive SWOT. With half the year gone, that won’t cut it. You need to bring SWOT to life with concrete actions to drive real acceleration. You have six months to make a meaningful impact and you must act now.
The concept is simple, like most best practices in sales. It’s light on theory and heavy on action. To improve on traditional SWOT’s output, you create practical, defined actions for each identified item, fortifying them through these four critical areas:
#1. Action: The primary action to drive improvement.
A practical plan or other type of initial progress, identifying real movement, strategy and action.
#2. Impact: The effect of the achievement of the results of the action.
Determining the expected impact – your predicted H2 results of the action.
#3. Accountability: The person accountable for making the action happen.
Since several of your teammates play roles, it’s critical to identify who does what. The most effective way to accomplish this is through the popular RACI system, which illustrates each person’s clear responsibilities:
R = Responsible – The people who perform the work.
A = Accountable – The one person specifically and ultimately accountable.
C = Consulted – The people whose counsel is sought and with whom two-way communication flows.
I = Informed – Those simply kept informed of status. While their input is welcome, it’s not required.
#4. Date: The date by which the action is to be completed.
The realistic date the action will be implemented.
With this simple process completed for all identified strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, the actions are then given impact levels and dates, generating a prioritized schedule for attacking the most productive actions first, maximizing improvement in H2. This is your path forward.
Take the time now to build this action-focused framework for your territory for H2 – no rolled-up flip charts collecting dust. You’ll have a powerful improvement track to run on and to close the year strong. You just have to do it.
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