The sales process is becoming more complex. Only 53% of sales professionals are meeting their quota, which means that 47% aren’t. You may need to transform your sales team to achieve success. These strategies will get you on your way to reaching your sales targets:
Every morning, take time to review your sales goals
Out loud, state your big-picture goal (yes, seriously). Next, review your day-to-day actions and review your weekly plan. Every day, take time to review how the day went and plan your activities for the next day.
Establish goals and actions for the next week by reviewing the week on Friday or Saturday.
It’s too easy to landline into tasks that do not further your goals once you enter the following week. Small fires need to be put out every day. Prepare for the coming week at the end of the week, and you’ll be prepared to tackle the most impactful tasks on Monday.
“You cannot expect to achieve new goals or move beyond your present circumstances unless you change.” – Les Brown
Share your goals regularly with a goals partner.
You should explicitly work with your goals partner each week to ensure that you’re on top of your goals, remaining committed, and pushing yourself. This person can be a peer, a mentor, a coach, or a friend. Discuss any obstacles or potholes that may be preventing you from reaching your goals, milestones, and progress so that you can get past them.
What are some examples of sales goals?
There are the following examples of sales goals:
Increasing Your Monthly or Annual Revenue
As an example of a fundamental sales goal, revenue targets should be a primary objective for every company. Revenue growth targets can be set monthly, annually, or both. It may also be helpful to break up your team’s overall revenue sales goal into individual sales goals for each of your reps, especially if your team has a comprehensive range of experience.
Reducing Customer Churn
Maintaining your customers is essential for your business’s survival, and if your company’s sales team is also handling account management, as is so often the case nowadays, then reducing churn is another top goal. A customer’s churn rate is the percentage of customers who abandon your business during a period of time. For instance, a typical sales goal might be to reduce customer churn to 1%.
Increase Units Sold and Boost Profit Margins
You should be able to find some of the most effective examples of sales goals if you do not deal with recurring revenue: units and margins. The number of units you sell determines the number of profit margins you generate. The margin, usually expressed as a percentage, is the amount of profit you earn from each unit you sell.
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Boost Customer Lifetime Value
You should upsell (help your customers upgrade their current deal) and cross-sell (encourage them to invest in another complimentary product or service) if your team is targeting a percentage increase in lifetime value. Make sure that reps have access to a sufficient amount of time to interact with existing customers – by sending emails with upgrade information and setting up calls – to determine whether upgrading would be beneficial for them.
How do you set goals and objectives?
Some people struggle to stick to goals since they don’t differentiate between goals and casual, everyday self-improvement efforts. Even though you decide to run every day, that doesn’t mean that’s what you’re trying to accomplish. Let’s talk about what goal setting is. Identifying a goal is the first step in setting an objective, skill, or project you want to accomplish. Afterward, you work to achieve that goal by devising a plan.
Let’s consider the steps mentioned below for a better understanding:
Think about the consequences you want to see
Look closely at what you want to accomplish, and then ask yourself these questions before you set a target:
- Are these things that you truly want?
- Is it significant enough to invest hours and effort into it?
Time is often the deciding factor as to whether something is worth pursuing. You may find it hard to accomplish all of your goals if you have a long list to achieve at the same time. Determine which of your goals is most important to you at this time by answering the questions above, and then set your sights on a few of those.
Create SMART goals
Setting SMART goals is crucial to tracking your progress and knowing whether you achieved them. You have a better chance of achieving your goal if you are more specific.
Write your goals down
Writing down your goals will make them real and tangible instead of just a vague idea you have in your head. Make sure your goals are visible once you’ve written them down–put them on your mirror or near the screen of your computer, post team goals on the walls next to everyone’s desks, and include company goals in presentations internally. You will be reminded to keep working on your goals every day with this tactic. Please write down your goals in a positive tone so that you remain enthusiastic about achieving them.
Create an Action Plan
There are many people who set goals but do not devise an action plan to determine how exactly they will achieve them. You should include in your action plan the overall goal you wish to achieve as well as all the steps needed to achieve it. Make your action plan as creative as possible. Remember how you used to do things in elementary school. Make a list of your goals using a crayon, marker, or colored pencil, for instance. This method activates a different part of your brain and helps you stay focused on your goals, according to Forbes.
Create a Timeline
To help visualize roles, responsibilities, milestones, and deadlines involved in achieving your goal, use a timeline maker. It would be best if you stuck to these dates as closely as possible after you have set them. By setting a timeline, you will feel a sense of urgency, which will motivate you to stick to your schedule and complete your tasks.
Take Action
It’s time to put your plans into action after you’ve planned everything. The work you put in wasn’t in vain. Every step you take should be another way that will bring you close to your goal.
Re-evaluate and assess your progress.
In order to achieve your goal, you need to keep your motivation high. Developing a weekly evaluation could include checking your schedule and evaluating your progress. By knowing how close you are to the end, you will be more motivated to push through to the end. Make necessary adjustments if you find yourself behind schedule.
“I think goals should never be easy, they should force you to work, even if they are uncomfortable at the time.” —Michael Phelps
What are SMART Sale Goals?
The sales managers and C-suite are responsible for setting SMART sales goals for each department. The SMART acronym uses five criteria to create a clear target that employees can work together towards – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-Based.
Here’s is the method to apply the SMART style of goal setting:
Specific: Make sure you explain how you will increase your customers or increase your sales revenue, not just say you want to do it. Using a consultative sales approach, for example, we will increase the revenue of our core product.
Measurable: You need to know the exact number you wish to achieve (e.g., $1M increase in revenue) in order to benchmark your performance, and you need the right tools and software in order to track your progress (e.g., new deals closed, repeat purchases, and customer churn).
Achievable: It is important not to set objectives that are impossible to accomplish while setting stretch goals for yourself and your employees. You shouldn’t set a goal of bringing in $5M if you only made $700,000 last year. Setting a target based on what you and your team know is achievable is a better approach.
Realistic: Your sales goals need to match your current sales strategy and current situation. As long as your business has never done social media selling and your customers aren’t interested in Instagram, it makes no sense to set a goal to acquire 100 new clients using Instagram. Every goal must be contextual.
Time-Based: Make sure your sales goals have a finish line when you set them. In the alternative, you may find yourself plodding along for years without seeing much improvement. It’s easiest to set sales goals based on quarterly and yearly dates since they coincide with the fiscal start and end dates.
Read More: Software Like Odoo That Boost You Sales
Why do SMART sales goals matter the most?
It’s similar to how Google Maps works for sales goals. They will chart a path for you to reach your destination once you determine where you want to go. You can also estimate your arrival time with the SMART goal formula with sufficient detail (e.g., how long it will take you to reach the destination). As a result, you run the risk of taking the wrong turn, taking a long way, or even heading in the wrong direction without a clearly defined objective. You can use this to increase revenue, acquisition, and retention rates for your business.
15 Ways to Achieve Your Goals Faster
In life, achieving any goal does not simply mean setting clearly defined ones and wishing for them. Successful achievement of any goal requires deploying the appropriate strategies. In the end, no matter how badly you want something or how you think you want it, things won’t work out if you don’t do it properly.
There are the following 15 ways to achieve your goals faster:
1. Set SMARTER Goals
Those who are serious about achieving their goals need to understand how important the SMARTER method is. The acronym SMARTER stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, timed, evaluated, and reassessing goals. This is a method for setting goals that will give you a high chance of success. You need to be very specific about a SMARTER goal in order to set one. Ensure that the goal is measurable and attainable by detailing it to the last detail. Lofty long-term goals are fine, but SMARTER ones should be attainable and slightly out of reach.
2. Create a Plan of Action
The best way to achieve any goal is by planning. But many of us do not make detailed plans to achieve our goals. If someone wants to achieve their dreams, they must create an action plan, and they must be willing to take action on a daily basis, without fail -in order to attain their goals. Plan out your goals and do everything you can to achieve them, day and night, until you achieve them.
3. Eliminate Bad Habits
Unfortunately, we can be held back by bad habits. As a result, our dreams and hopes are stifled. A person who desires to achieve anything worthwhile knows that they need to eliminate the bad habits that hinder them.
4. Instill Self-discipline
We are able to achieve our goals on cruise control when we maintain self-discipline. Those who are disciplined can accomplish anything. People who lack self-discipline may find any menial task too difficult to accomplish. Developing disciplined habits is the best way to become self-disciplined.
5. Mitigate your Distractions
It is unavoidable that distractions hinder our progress, yet the world is filled with them. Among the most common forms of distraction are always-on pocket computers, which offer access to vast amounts of information in real time. The trick is to ignore the distractions. A strategy for achieving your goals is to become aware of distractions around you and then work to eliminate them.
6. Leverage daily goal setting
Staying on track to your long-term goals that are years and years away is possible by setting small daily goals. While we’re struggling to balance our day-to-day responsibilities and stay on top of those big goals, it’s easy to lose sight of them. However, those daily goals can be more easily followed and stayed focused on.
7. Avoid Procrastination
Our goals aren’t achieved due to procrastination. We are stifled by it and compelled to retreat into the comforts and habits that have become familiar. The key to achieving anything worthwhile is to eliminate procrastination. Act now instead of waiting another moment or day to do what needs to be done.
8. Manage your Time
To become a successful person, you need to become an effective time manager. A person who is good at managing time will be able to achieve their loftiest goals. It would be best if you learned how to manage your precious little time effectively in order to prevent wasting it.
9. Chase the Frog
It’s best to tackle the most prominent items on your to-do list, those things that would provide the most significant benefit to your long-term goals. That was Mark Twain’s advice on eating a frog in the morning. If there are two frogs, eat the bigger one first. It is also called our MIT, or the essential task of the day.
10. The Pareto Principle
Known also as the 80/20 rule, the Pareto Principle indicates that 80 percent of results are achieved by putting forth only 20 percent of our efforts. It means you should focus on scaling up the small actions that are delivering the best results. In order to implement this strategy, you must first determine which measures are generating the most outstanding returns. Once you do that, it is only a matter of scaling up.
11. Welcome Failure
The best path to success in any endeavor is, by far, by failing. This might seem odd to some, but failure is the surest way to succeed. A number of the world’s most famous personalities have been unable. They did not give up. That is what made them unique.
12. Find out Daily doses of Inspiration.
Often times fear is the stalker that stalks us at night, suffocating us and making it impossible for us to succeed. Taking daily doses of inspiration can help counter that. Look up to other successful people in your career field. Get inside their heads by listening to their stories for inspiration.
13. Find a Mentor
An effective mentor illuminates a pathway to success by shedding light on it. Through the misty fog, they shine brightly under the stars and help us reach our goals. They know which way to travel in and how to navigate through treacherous waters to ensure their survival.
14. Track your Progress
Tracking your progress is vital to achieving anything worthwhile. Tracking your progress allows you to assess and adjust your progress toward reaching your goals. By not following, you’ll never know where you are, what you’ve accomplished, or how much is left.
15. Welcome Criticism
It’s not uncommon for people to criticize others, especially when they see them succeed. You are attacked by those who do their best to take you down, and when you fail, they point out that you should never have attempted this lofty goal in the first place. That criticism should be welcomed. It should not be ignored. This criticism will act as fuel for your way to success.
What to do if sales goals are not met?
There are the following things you can do if you fail to meet your sales goal:
Find the root cause of the problem
Losing a deal can make you want to shake your head and walk away. As a result, you miss out on a rare opportunity to learn from your mistakes and improve. Losing a deal can provide insight, even if you screwed up. It can be uncomfortable to undergo this discovery process, as you must correspond with a company that just rejected you as a client. Just act as if you had won the deal. Take notes from the interaction to improve your sales performance in the future.
Make sure your team is aware of the importance of this information and that it will help them develop an effective sales plan. If they lose a deal or miss a sales target, make sure they know that information sharing is a part of their workflow and process.
Run a Deal Retrospective
It’s time to conduct a retrospective once you have determined the cause (or at least tried to). It’s not a good idea to dwell on the fact that you lost, but letting your laziness keep you from rethinking your approach is also not a positive move. By understanding the flow and any gaps in the sales pipeline, you will be able to monitor other deals more closely. In order To ensure proper hygiene, all additional deals under consideration should be assessed if any items were missed.
Ask questions and offer support.
Despite the obvious, sales are often not adequately supported. Lack of backing can often be challenging to notice and is not always something that the sales rep is aware of. Technical sales are no different than any other sales process when it comes to adequately addressing a question or concern.
Make sure your sales personnel are able to reach the decision-makers within the prospective company and check in with them. Please provide them with access to everyone who might be able to offer value and coach them on how to engage them. It is essential to ask for help rather than shy away from it.