What do you think if I tell you that you have to set sales goals within your company?
You are probably thinking that I want to encourage you to sell more products or services than those you have marketed to date.
Don’t worry, it’s the first thought that takes shape in everyone’s mind.
In reality, setting sales goals is afundamental activity within every company that actually wants to do business. It has a much broader meaning than what is commonly recognized.
Think about it. You are a sales representative, or you have sales representatives on your team, and you need to keep them motivated to sell the product or service you produce.
Without one destination to aim forit would be impossible for anyone to achieve the expected turnover.
If you and your team don’t set well-defined goals, you risk stumbling around in the dark and even suffering a drop in sales.
You don’t want this to happen, do you?
You always have to know which one result you are working with, what numbers you are dealing with and, only in this way, will you be able to measure whether your business is actually selling.
So let’s not waste any more time and find out immediately what they are steps to set sales goals and how they must be to bring you an economic advantage.
If you want to work on your specific situation right away, click the button and find out more about how I can help you.
Why is it important to set sales goals?
Everything is fine sales cycle it is in itself, has particular moments and must satisfy specific customer needs.
In addition to this, each of your sellers is different from the other. There are those who have a more exuberant personality, those who are more precise or those who, however, are able to empathize more with customers.
As you can see, the variables There are so many you’re dealing with and you need to find a way to give each sales rep on your team some guidelines.
If your entire team travels consciously towards the same destination, you will be able to obtain more and more results and the greater the winnings of your sales agents, the greater their enthusiasm and desire to continue selling.
Fixed some clear objectives
that can be followed by everyone.
Be careful though, these have to be goals obtainable to actually bring a high conversion rate.
In summary, setting goals is very important to be a successful salesman and so that the whole team maintains focus on a very specific objective, investing the right amount of energy.
Now that you understand the importance of this strategy, you may be wondering: “How do I understand what the right goals are?”.
Different types of objectives in the company
The key to a successful business is setting the right objectives because if you know where you need to go it will be easier to understand which path to take to reach your goal.
So the first step is to identify the different types of objectives you and your teams will be dealing with:
- Commercial objectives: they are of primary importance and represent a real priority because they are the ones that, once achieved, allow you to grow the entire business;
- Marketing objectives: they support commercial activity, business now largely depends on marketing and the advantageous conditions that well-done communication brings to the entire company;
- Branding goals: related to marketing but in the strictest sense of the positioning of your brand and what people think of your company, products or services;
- Advertising objectives: they have to do with the numbers and metrics of promotional campaigns, today it mainly concerns online and which help you expand your audience.
If your main objective is to increase profits, today you cannot do it without taking into account the entire integrated strategy that will lead you to the result you desire. Depending on the type of activity, different objectives must be set and the best activities to achieve them must be planned accordingly. Furthermore, with thegap analysis you will be able to compare the pre-established objectives with the results obtained and understand in which direction you are going.
How to plan a sales goal?
We said that the goal must be clear and, above all, reachable. Without this last feature you risk having the opposite effect on your team, i.e. discouraging them.
What are the elements that help you set sales goals?
Let’s analyze them one by one:
- Set revenue goals: establish what revenues and goals you want to achieve with your business.
- Calculate the timing correctly: the sale has physiological times that must be respected such as, for example, the times to know the product or service well (perhaps following training courses), those for setting appointments and carrying out the follow upbut also those of material delivery of the product.
- Talk to your vendors: they are your driving force, talk to them to understand how to better set the objectives also based on their needs.
- Monitor the team: keep an eye on how your agents move to improve sales strategieschecking how long it takes them to respond to an email, call a customer back or how long it takes them to close the deal.
- Record the results: create a table in which you enter the objectives achieved, the time it took to complete them, any errors made, etc.
- Motivate salespeople to achieve goals: your salespeople must feel that the company objectives are also theirs and that everyone’s success is important to achieving the overall result. Vice versa, the result of the company is everyone’s success.
To enjoy this topic wherever you are, also listen to my Podcast on company sales goals and keep all the useful sources to achieve your business results just a click away.
Now let’s see the method with which to implement each of these steps to set your sales goals.
Sales goals must be SMART
Now I’ll tell you a secret, in this case the magic formula exists. As the acronym with which it is defined says, it is a truly intelligent method with which to set your productivity goals.
This method allows you to set and achieve a goalmeasure its effectiveness and reach even the infamous increases in sales.
Here you are what your sales goals should look like.
Specific
When you set a goal, you have to be very precise. You can’t just say you want to increase sales. By how much? 10, 20 or 30%?
The sales team must have gods numbers in hand with which to measure yourself to understand if you are actually achieving the result you set yourself.
Avoid misunderstandings it is the first step to achieve the objectives, optimizing the resources available.
Measurable
Every process that works must be measurable, that is, you must be able to quantify the theory in numbers.
For you, an increase in sales could mean marketing ten units of product while, for another, it could mean reaching 20 more.
Communicate to your salespeople with numbers how many sales you want them to achieve within the quarter, semester or year.
Accessible
For a goal to be achievable you must evaluate all variables that we talked about at the beginning. You need to consider where your sales reps are starting from, what skills they have and what the timescales are for them to get to the results you want.
Like a student who cannot hope to study three hundred pages the day before the exam, you also cannot ask for a 50% increase in sales in a single month.
Each process is composed of step
which must be carried out one after the other.
Realistic
This feature is closely related to the previous one, but is more closely related to psychological sphere of your sales team.
Let’s take an example. Hoping to double your potential customers in a month can seem like a really difficult obstacle to overcome. What can this awareness arouse in the minds of your sellers? Anxiety and procrastination.
Setting sales goals that are too high risks discouraging your collaborators at the start because they already know that it is useless to commit, even if they worked day and night that result would remain unattainable.
On the other hand, setting too simple goals also prevents your resources from testing themselves and implementing their skills.
So, set goals that are challenging but achievable.
Timely
To all your goals you need one datewe cannot speak of indefinite times. Also because, as is known, the more time you have to complete a project, the more you tend to take it all up and extend the deadlines.
If, however, there is little time available, then we will try to be as productive as possible in order to make the most of every minute to achieve the result. Obviously, even in this case, there needs to be a balance between the tasks to be done and the time to be able to do them.
The best strategy you can follow is to schedule the objectives and, cyclically, monitor the results at the end of the deadlines you have set for yourself.
Having a date allows the team to motivate themselves and you to keep tabs on how they work.
How to reach sales goals
At this point let’s see what the fundamental steps are that will allow you to achieve the goals you have set for yourself.
In fact, if the first step is to set the right objectives, whether they are sales or the others we have seen, the other steps are those which, one after the other, will make you reach your goal.
So, once the goal is clear:
- Create the plan in which you write down your short and long term goals;
- Divide into steps your goals to understand which ones you need to achieve first and which ones later to be able to achieve the final goal. Remember that this is a journey to be done in stages, each of them will bring you closer to the result;
- Identify people who can help you achieve your goals and how, so divide the work;
- Define indicators to understand if you are proceeding in the right direction;
- Build the flow o the sales process designed specifically for sales activities;
- Align your salespeople and collaborators so that they know what goals you want to achieve so that they can help you do it.
If you are not convinced, or convinced, of the results you are obtaining or the strategy implemented, take your planning again and review it from the beginning.