Are you on track to meet your sales goal this year? If so, great. These five steps still apply to your world. If you are like most salespeople (about 84% ), you are not on target to meet your sales goals, and you are looking for some help.
Here are 5 steps that every salesperson can do and should do this week to hit or exceed their sales goals.
- Do the math.
- Evaluate your target accounts against plan.
- Recalibrate your effort and focus. Which accounts? Where have you had success?
- Where do you need help?
- Plan for Q1 & Q2 next year.
- Do the math. Simple right? Maybe. Subtract your current sales revenue from your sales goal; that delta is what you need sell by the year end. This math is simple to achieve, but what are the other factors. Look at your sales pipeline and determine what opportunities that line up with Q3 and Q4 by month. What is at the bottom of the funnel that will create revenue and what needs to come into the top of the funnel each week to make up the difference. What are the historical trends for your company? Are the best months in Q4 or Q2? It is not just a number, but you must at least understand the number. You must know your win rates and understand your pipeline. Your sales manager should be helping you with these areas, but it is your career and your compensation.
- Evaluate your target accounts against plan. Now you must dive down into your accounts. Are the target revenue amounts for each account where they were projected? Some probably are much higher and some much too low. Evaluate where you spent your time over the last two quarters; did the effort pay off? It is important to understand why you were having success and why you were NOT. This usually requires honesty on the salespersons part and good, objective coaching from a sales manager?
- Recalibrate your effort and focus. Do you need to re-focus the time you are spending on non-growth accounts toward other accounts? The answer is usually Yes. Where can you impact revenue the most with your time? Typically, you will move some targets out of your list, and recalibrate the time you spend on others and probably add a few accounts to your target lists. Do the work and evaluate? Your staging of your pipeline is important with this recalibration. Your opportunities must be in the correct stages and dead deals should be removed. Poor sales performance correlates to poor pipeline management.
- Where do you need help? Again, honesty is critical here; as is the help of your sales manager. Are you struggling qualifying prospects? Your sales manager should be able to identify this because you have deals that get stuck. Whether it is Qualifying a prospect early or learning to ask better questions (consultative selling), you need to improve your skills if you want to improve your performance. Ask your sales manager, read a book, look for on-line resources. It is your career and you need to invest in yourself.
- Plan for Q1/Q2 of next year. Elite salespeople are always looking for information and opportunities for the future, not just for the current sales cycle; but six to twelve months ahead. If you are asking great questions, you will be gaining market intelligence about the industry, your accounts and your competitors. Begin to qualify and disqualify prospects for opportunities into next year. Budget questions really help you understand when decisions will be made. Knowing which opportunities will close in Q4 vs Q1 can really help you be prepared.
My sales guys go through this analysis formally every quarter with me. They are encouraged to review the same each month. There planning for the next year does not take much time because it is done consistently each quarter. We just add the element of a new sales goal.
