Deals will stay far from achieved if your team doesn’t have smart sales goals. And that doesn’t simply mean meeting quota but catering to smaller weekly or monthly objectives. A SMART outlook breaks down the sales objectives into easy steps inhibiting confidence among reps, appreciated by incremental rewards. On the other hand, it also enables one to monitor the steady progress towards larger sales goals, bridging any backlog.
9 unique strategies to set sales goals
1. Evaluate monthly sales goals
Individual or team sales goals must align with annual targets. You can calculate monthly sales goals counting backward from the business’ annual revenue goals. When the target comes uncovered, figure out the amount of toil required by the sales department, teams, and reps to meet them. In this regard, take into account staffing or seasonal inconsistencies. For instance, hiring only 3 new sales professionals this fall can’t meet assertive goals in Q4, as they need to be trained in the initial months. To be flexible, you have to work hard on the goals, pushing the resources harder beforehand.
2. Set waterfall goals
Always plan some time when implementing new sales goals and hiring SDRs. That said, slowly ramp up the process rather than setting higher goals in one go. The strategy upholds flexible morale over the period, giving enough time to your team to work on their efficiency. On the contrary, missing targets can lay the ground for fear, depriving employees of motivation. In short, the particular approach can help produce quality work and good figures in a sustained manner.
Moving forward, budget for ramp-up time when you’re implementing new goals and onboarding reps. If your reps are currently sending 50 emails a week and you want them to send 100 within the same period, don’t immediately double their goals. Instead, raise their goal to 60 emails next week, 70 the following week, and so on.
3. Sequence goals
Identify the goals which can deliver the highest value. Ask your team to meet them. That said, if you are sequencing goals for a junior sales professional, provide the scope for improvement in the crucial areas. The strategy can help meet the most important goals of a company, whether related to the bottom line or professional growth.
4. Activity goals
This strategy converts the targets into activity goals based on a sales rep’s past performance. If a rep needs to bring in a minimum of 4 deals in a month and if 50% of demos convert to deals on an average, math says eight leads have to be demonstrated. Now, if 30% of calls book a demo, approx 27 prospects need to be contacted. While hitting quotas can pose several hurdles, calculating the potential activities backward presents a manageable approach towards goal fulfillment.
5. Incentivize goals
Incentives take various forms such as bonuses, variable compensation, and retention of jobs. Apart from that, achieving every smaller goal must be rewarded with incentives for better motivation of SDRs. You can promise them a cash bonus, employee recognition awards, vacation policies, or a round of golf on meeting weekly targets.
6. Track the goal-based outcomes
Evaluate the team’s progress according to the set goals. You can monitor progress with the help of a dashboard in CRM or ask reps to record their weekly figures in a spreadsheet. If a rep is unable to meet their weekly sales goals, sort the problem before it continues for a month.
7. Set stretch goals
A goal that exceeds the primary target is known as a stretch goal. Realistic stretch goals can be effective for a high performer to challenge and motivate the workflow in the sales journey.
8. Suggest mentor goals
If a salesperson faces difficulty fitting into the flow or hits an obstacle, suggest they get a hold of a mentor. You can either guide them with a fabric or ask them to take someone’s help. The mentorship of someone besides the manager can break the blues at times.
9. Set a collective goal
Offer incentives when every rep meets a goal. It can be getting through a targeted number of calls, fixing meetings, sending emails, achieving a sum of revenue, or achieving a percentage of customer retention. You can even come up with the policy of company-paid happy hours to make them work hard consistently.
Examples of sales goals
- Add $3000 more revenue in Q2, $4000 more in Q3, $5000 more in Q4 respectively.
- Book X demos in a week or per day.
- Ramp up the closing ratio by X% this quarter.
- Share one article every week.
- Touch base with each new client at least once a month.
- Achieve a retention figure more than X%.
- Cut back the time spent in converting a lead to a customer.
- Attend one professional development session every month.
- Book the highest number of meetings from the team.
- Schedule 5 demos with enterprise-level leads
A SaaS business can move around various goals such as increasing customer lifetime value, reducing churn rate, boosting average revenue per client, and decreasing the cost per conversion. Setting too many or too few sales goals won’t be able to bring in the expected revenue. Only a balanced approach can lead the path to success.
Define your realistic goal
The reason behind sales reps failing to achieve sales goals trace to faulty goal setting rather than individual mistakes. Since the concept of industry-specific goals doesn’t exist in reality, every goal should be founded on hard data, targeted to the market, customers, products, and industry. Parameters like sales records, growth rates, and performance of rivals can provide exclusive insights for goal setting.
For instance, if a company has recorded 5% growth yearly, it can target a figure of 10% in the same timespan but not 25%. It’s crucial to assess the growth potential of the industry and market(barely tapped or over-saturated), to be met by a sales goal. You need to find answers to a couple of questions and address the backlogs accordingly-
- Is my sales team motivated enough to meet increased expectations?
- Do we have sufficient funds and resources to scale up quickly when necessary?
- Is my company quite established to attain success?
- Do I have an efficient growth team to supply sales-ready leads?
Set monthly sales goals
You can set either weekly or monthly sales goals based on the type of business model. It can be channelized in two ways- setting vague goals to boost revenue or planning long-term goals to increase revenue by 15% in 2 years. Being too broad, the former falls short on specificity to spot the leading steps and milestones. Hence it’s wise to go by the latter option, preceded by small rewards in the sales journey. It will sustain the team’s motivation while uplifting the overall morale with time.
As per the thumb rule, it’s important to set a baseline monthly sales goal by analyzing the break-even yearly revenue on the following lines:
- Salary payment
- Cost of production
- Marketing
- Distribution
- Utilities
- Other expenses
Divide the result by 12 to calculate the minimum monthly sales goals beyond which you’ll be subject to losses. Similarly, adding to that figure will encourage the growth of the business.
Crunch a few numbers
A revenue ramp-up can only translate with some actionable and realistic steps driven by reliable data. For instance, if your sales team converts 5 deals in every 100 calls and you just want to make it 10 a month, the team has to dedicate 200 calls in total. This counts to 6.67 calls on average each day. Now, if each call’s duration is 45 mins, the goal will be unfeasible and impracticable. Either way, each call taking a maximum of 10 mins can easily break through the funnel. There lies the difference between unrealistic and realistic targets.
Evaluate the effective and ineffective means
Until you analyze the sales cycle concerning cold and hard data, revenue cannot be multiplied. It concerns several factors such as length of cycle, conversion rates, closing ratio, losses, effective channels, etc. Working as a team in the collection, analysis, and discussion of the sales blueprint holds primary importance. It involves questions like:
- What resources, skills and tools can address the gaps?
- From which place do most leads move away? How can it be overcome?
- Is the churn rate not up to the mark or simply beyond the standard?
- On which platforms potential customers are staying active? Is the business reaching out to them effectively?
- Are the acquisition-related expenses crossing the budget or is it lagging by any means?
The best thing you can ever try for is to fit into the category of stretch goals. Once you are in the picture, set and attain small goals. Cultivate your resources to the best possible extent, starting from money, knowledge, expertise, talents, to equipment. This will create a surplus to achieve aggressive goals and earn fame in the industry. In other words, when you’re aiming for a major change, your approach has to be SMART.
Adopt a SMART approach
By the word SMART, it means personal, professional, or a combination of both. If a goal fulfills any such criteria, it will be called SMART. The acronym breaks into 5 factors namely:
Specific: Have a clean and explicit outlook to the milestone you want to touch. It will help you attain the target more efficiently rather than hitting vague goals.
Measurable: Set a deadline or timeline for the goal. It would motivate the team members and track progress simultaneously.
Achievable: Always be practical. Don’t count on something that won’t be attainable in reality.
Relevant: Ensure that your sales goal aligns with other business goals.
Time-bound: Don’t make your goal for granted. Set a timeframe and proceed towards the target.
Strategies to track sales goals effectively
For sales reps, keeping a tab on the sales figures manually can be time exhaustive, despite being the best way to emphasize achieved outcomes. On the other hand, you must organize the necessary resources and manpower including consistent team coordination, software, pipeline, review of goals, and deals.
State the commission structure from the beginning
There is no absolute commission structure for a startup. The sales journey itself governs the compensation framework led by growth and learning. Initially, you need to select a policy and test its effectiveness. A commission structure has two outlooks:
- Count on the initial few hires: You promise a base salary to the new hires and create a commission structure propelled by experience. While the proposal might not attract everyone, by the end you will be ascertained about real figures.
- Route your wishes until fulfilled: Design a structure in liaison with sales goals, stemming from your wants. Streamline your progress accordingly.
Given the context, your personality and company culture should determine the right approach.
Provide retention bonuses
Since chasing new clients serves as obvious for a sales team, the last thing any business wishes to gain is a culture of fast turnovers. Here, you need to tweak the strategy by rewarding incentives to reps as they draw the right leads in the long run. Giving out target-based bonuses can take multiple forms like:
- A customer completing his anniversary: Present bonuses when clients stick to the company for a quarter or a year.
- Upgradation to a premium plan: When your team turns a casual customer into a loyal fan of your company, don’t forget to respect their labor.
- Past clients becoming repeat customers: Sometimes the nature of business implies serving customers for once, especially when you sell a product or one-off service. But what if your sales team brings the past customers back into the funnel to buy a new offering? Appreciate their loyal dedication with bonuses.
How to resolve the day-to-day problems obstructing your sales goals?
You might face several challenges exploring the sales funnel. That too can be met with a range of solutions tailored to specific situations:
- If you are unable to identify the potential leads, try achieving something with the gained prospects. Think about a triggering action from every possible aspect.
- When handling objections about your offering, listen to the prospects’ feedback. Identify their unfulfilled needs and convey the same to the product team asking to make the necessary changes.
Extras: Sign up for Gmail based CRM and attain sales goals faster than ever
You might be already convinced about the utilities of software-based solutions in measuring individual goals. However, that needs switching tabs as you move around from Gmail client to CRM platform to third-party tools. A unified alternative is Gmail which allows collaborating every activity under one roof besides setting sales goals hand in hand. How? The answer is GoogleSuite.
Tips to measure sales goals in 3 steps
1. Integrate tech and software stack
Implementing a CRM platform comes easy when a business is still in its nascent stage. Finding the ideal software and hardware for your sales team equals an integral task. A collaboration and communication platform called RingCentral provides texting, emailing, voice, and video calling options in one window. You can also integrate popular sales apps, CRMs into the platform such as Salesforce, Zoho, and dial from computers, log notes, and have conversations as needed.
2. Monitor the analytics
If your sales goals appear tough to be evaluated, use qualitative interviews, surveys to collect relevant data points.
3. Break down and interpret the information
You might commit hundreds of mistakes in the sales journey. Every fault will teach you a lesson for correction. If you are tech-savvy, machine learning and AI can analyze detailed information. Some tools possess the ability to study customer interactions over multiple platforms, thereby shooting recommendations to improve conversion rates. Either way, a business consultant can interpret such info and help you restrategize them.
Key takeaways:
- What are examples of sales goals?
- Increasing monthly or annual revenue
- Cutting back churn rates
- Increasing sales and boosting profit margins
- Scale-up customer lifetime value
- Increase number of qualified leads
- Augment winning rates
- Reduce customer acquisition costs
2. What are good sales goals?
- Achieve $1000000 new sales revenue the current year
- Boost win rate by 5% over the next quarter
- Decrease sales cycle length by 2% every month this year
- Increase average sales value to $2500 by the quarter-end
- Bring down customer acquisition cost by year-end
- Generate 200 new leads every month
3. What are your goals as a sales representative?
Meeting revenue targets of sales managers- close deals under negotiation, discover new opportunities with present customers or generate new leads.
4. What are realistic sales goals?
They depend on logic and luck to motivate reps which encourages them to achieve the optimum revenue, driven by an ambitious goal(must be realistic).
