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Business excellence requires you to have a perfect sales plan which you have to follow to execute your sales activities flawlessly. Planning involves coming up with something visible. Let’s say a document; this could be a guide or a write-up on getting started. A perfect sales plan goes along with execution or putting something into practice and doing it hands-on. Having a good sales plan without execution is a waste of time.
Setting sales goals for your team is an integral part of a sales manager’s role. Smart sales goals are activity-focused and achievable without being too targeted at hitting numbers.
Sales objectives refer to goals or desired ends, guiding and motivating all marketing actions. Therefore, it is essential to correctly define these objectives in the sales plan to evaluate the company's activities and strategies.
Qualities Of Sales Goals
Setting goals is essential because they give you direction. These goals should be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound.
1. Specific
Sales goals should be as specific as possible. To do this, consider where the company wants to pay special attention when setting them. For example, if the company is looking to focus on profits, you have to draw up a strategic plan based on increasing profit margins. So, they will be profitability targets.
2. Quantifiable.
If there are no quantitative criteria in your goals that your sellers can compare themselves to, there will be no way of knowing whether they have achieved them. For this, it is essential to use metrics adapted to your business that help you measure all the commercial activity of the sales area.
3. Achievable.
At this point, it is essential to establish if the objectives you propose are realistic and feasible. For example, a monthly sales goal might be to increase prospecting calls by 20% over the previous month. But if you want to achieve this increase in your sales reps, you first have to consider whether they have the time and resources available to do so.
4. Relevant.
Sales goals are critical, as they not only help the sales force or the commercial director but can also determine the revenue budget, which directly influences the general expenses budget of the entire company.
The business budget should be included in your sales forecast. In turn, the sales forecast consists of the financial plan, the marketing budget, operations, human resources, etc. If the estimates do not coincide with the results obtained at the end of the month, part of the business budget will be compromised.
5. Temporal.
This means allocating your team's time based on your sales goals. But it is not that simple, since sometimes you will feel the sensation that time is slipping through your fingers like sand, and it is the same or worse than what your sales representatives experience.
When you define your team's sales goals, you must consider your customer portfolio since you cannot allocate the same time to some as to others. Therefore, seek to delimit the customers that generate more money from those that create less and focus on the former, resolving their doubts immediately.
How To Set Sales Goals
Hierarchizing your sales goals will allow you to organize them in order of relevance and better plan the tasks to precisely fulfill those that lead the pyramid since those are the main ones you want to achieve in a stipulated period. It also means that the sales goals you want to achieve are more urgent for your business.
In short, when planning your sales goals, ensure they are essential to get more customers and sales closings in the commercial area and add value to your company. Also that they are achievable, that they respond to a particular term, and that they are measurable and specific. Once you have them, prioritize them and start working on them with your sales team.
Working backward from your company’s annual revenue target gives you a realistic view of the activities required to drive the desired result and helps you to determine what’s achievable.
Let’s do some quick math with a salesperson goal-setting example. First, look at a team member’s past performance and determine how many calls, emails or sales meetings they typically need to close a deal.
If it takes them ten calls to make a sale, their close rate is 10%. Now calculate how many calls they need to hit their target. For example, if you want them to close 50 deals this year, they need to make 500 calls.
Breaking that down into smaller targets means an average of 40 calls per month or ten calls per week (taking leave into account, of course). In addition, breaking down your annual target into smaller monthly or weekly chunks will create a sense of immediacy for your sales team to start working towards their target immediately.
Setting achievable sales objectives that your sales team can control is pivotal to boosting morale, motivation and confidence. This will also help keep your team on track throughout the year, enabling you to monitor their progress more effectively.
Remember, no two sales reps are created equal. Skill sets, strengths and experience will vary. Keep this in mind when working with your team members to set realistic goals to meet their quota.
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