Own Your Sales Targets—Assess Your Progress at Each Stage

What are the three most important things that you want from your job? If you don’t know or if you can’t answer this question, you are not taking control of your life or your future and you are leaving life to chance and circumstance.

Your job or business has expectations of you. You should have expectations of your job or business in return. Make sure you know what these expectations are, and make sure the people you report to know them as well, and are in agreement. Then, together, everyone can win.

Reviews of these expectations may follow a pre-determined quarterly or annual schedule. But you need to be monitoring and measuring your progress regularly to make sure you are on track, even if the people you report to don’t.

Ben Stein said, “Nothing happens by itself… it all will come your way, once you understand that you have to make it come your way, by your own exertions.”

Map organizational targets

In most organizations the expectations of management for salespeople is revenue- or volume-based, while salespeople’s expectations are to have the freedom and support to do their job, and to be well rewarded or recognized for doing it.

Let’s take a look at the organizational goals that you are expected to meet or surpass.

Let’s pretend your goal or target is to sell and deliver $1 million of new revenue within the fiscal year for your organization. How do you intend to meet it?

In detailing your action plan, you have to take history into consideration. What can the past tell you about seasonality trends, favorable market conditions, competitive activities, your call-to-close ratios, etc.? Knowing these and other sorts of information can benefit you considerably.

You should first review the past, as it is likely to repeat itself. Then map out your target as finely as you can by periods—quarters, months, weeks, days.

Each of these periods becomes a sub-target or sub-goal and should be monitored and measured accordingly.

But in order for you to meet these sub-goals, you have to do something. That something is your behaviour.

As a salesperson you have to demonstrate appropriate behaviour. You have to be constantly filling the funnel with suspects (potential buyers), qualifying them to become prospects, making presentations, acquiring new business to become buyers, and following up.

You also have to maintain and develop more business from existing buyers, handle requests, go to meetings, complete all kinds of reports and maintain a positive and enthusiastic attitude, no matter what.

Keep your GPS set towards your organizational goals and assess your progress at each stage. You may have access to custom reporting via a CRM or other sales system. One way or the other, you need reliable metrics to track your progress to a timetable. Can you be sure of your conversion ratio or the best method you reach your customers?

Adjust your behaviours to achieve greater results

If you don’t have a CRM and don’t know your ratios, you will first need to track your daily behaviours, which is not all that difficult and worth the effort in the long run. Create your own daily behaviour tracking worksheet. Summarize the numbers monthly to determine the time spent and your averages, or ratios. This in turn will help you in determining the selling habits that will make you more productive and more successful.   See an example of how I applied this in Good Selling Habits.

Back to the organizational goals that you are expected to meet or surpass. Each should be smart, measurable, attainable, relevant and trackable to a timetable.

If you don’t have an online system to help you track these goals, a self-made goal log with short-, medium- and long-range goals can help. You’re welcome to use/modify my goal log form for this purpose. Complete one for each of your organizational goals for the fiscal year.

You can also download a Goal Chart and Monthly Monitor Chart on my Free Resources page. Just scroll down to the Documents section.