Learning how to set sales goals that are effective is essential to the success of sales professionals. Goals can provide direction and serve as a tool to improve your team. With the right tips and framework when creating sales goals, your team can achieve goals consistently. Once sales goals have been created, achieving them will help your sales team stay committed to their task more than ever!
Why Set Goals in Sales?
- Goals can help your sales team focus on what really matters. Providing a clear path towards a sale can prevent your team from getting distracted. Which means your team can make sales happen much quicker and easier, allowing your team the opportunity to make the next sale!
- It can be hard to note your progress and success without effective goals. Creating goals for your team can give you the information to track your progress and measure success!
- Sales goals are great for providing a tangible point for your sales team to move towards. This serves as an effective external motivator for your team to keep improving and enables the drive that they need to succeed.
5 Practical Tips For Setting Goals in Sales
1.) Start with the end in mind
It is hard to build a path towards a sales goal without knowing where you will end up. By creating this framework with the end of your goal, the steps leading there will be much easier to make.
- Determine the outcome you want to achieve: Clear, concise words should be used to create the outcome of the goal. By determining the outcome, you provide a distinct point to focus on and ensure that you can stay on track.
- Determine what success means to you: The outcome of a sales goal is the completion of it. You have achieved your goal, but what does that success mean? By setting the goal, what do you hope that means for you and your team?
- Create the path towards your goal: You know what the outcome and success of a sales goal means to you. Now, it is time to build the path towards that goal. Use the structure you made to build steps for the team’s progress forward.
2.) Make your goals SMART
Setting a sales goal is just the start. A popular means of setting goals is the SMART approach. This approach creates goals that are clear, achievable, and have a defined timeline to better aid your team.
3.) Break goals down into smaller steps
Sales goals should be both effective and have steps. What are good sales goals without an easy means of following them?
- Goals with too many complexities can be difficult to manage while making a sale.
- By creating smaller steps, your team can track their progress more easily while feeling more successful with each step completed.
- With small, defined steps you can create better strategies to avoid potential challenges that occur. Allowing your team to be more adaptable, and with less hurdles down the road.
4.) Write your goals down
It can be challenging to keep the many aspects of selling purely in mind. By establishing a physical means of keeping track of your goals, your team can more reliably remember and refer to each step.
- Research has indicated that writing your goals down can help you better achieve them. It serves as a reminder, and the act of writing internalizes the information better!
- Creating a tangible means of how to achieve sales goals creates a sense of accountability. This process can help your team stay focused, tackling one step at a time. With written goals, it can also be much easier to track progress and keep motivation high!
5.) Break goals down into smaller steps
By collaborating with your colleagues, managers, and mentors, you can improve on the sales goals you have created. Feedback is important for growth, and having another set of eyes on your work can fill in any unintentional holes.
- Your team and business all have the same intent for success. Another person’s perspective can catch issues that you had not considered and prevent avoidable issues early.
- Sharing your goals with others shows accountability, and a desire to receive feedback. There is always room to grow and having that additional guidance will only help you and your team fine-tune your work.
Strategies For How to Achieve Sales Goals
1.) Stay committed
Goals do not complete themselves! When learning how to achieve sales goals, one of the most important steps is keeping yourself committed to your task.
- Keep yourself focused on achieving your goal. It can be hard to stay focused, but with an effective sales goal you have a structure to dedicate yourself to.
- One of the keys to keeping focus is reducing distractions. There will always be distractions but avoid getting sidetracked by tasks that are not necessary for your goal. The steps towards your goal should be clear enough to keep you focused!
2.) Track Progress
Goals do not complete themselves! When learning how to achieve sales goals, one of the most important steps is keeping yourself committed to your task.
- Regularly track progress: It is not enough to just track your progress occasionally. Keep regular tabs on the progress you are making towards your goal. It is an effective tool for you to reference and keep yourself motivated.
- What tracking your progress means to you: Tracking this information not only keeps you motivated, but also works to identify areas that you can improve upon. This is especially helpful for novices, but still important for those who have experience selling. Being aware of what you can improve will make your life much easier.
- Use tools that work for you: Tools like sales dashboards or CRM (customer relationship management) systems can help manage the tracking of progress. These tools often include quick visuals to reference at a moment’s notice!
3.) Celebrate Milestones
Celebration should not be limited to the completion of the sales goal. Accomplishing steps towards your goal should be celebrated, and not forgotten.
- Steps towards a goal are markers to your success. The people working towards this goal are putting in tangible effort and progress, and it is important to be aware of that.
- Being aware of these milestones shows the salesperson that they are performing well and helps bolster motivation to keep on moving. By celebrating these accomplishments, you can help maintain momentum forwards, especially after a particularly difficult milestone.
Flexibility is key when it comes to selling. What are good sales goals for if not to provide a structure for you to adjust? Adapting a sales goal to unexpected changes is a necessity of selling.should be celebrated, and not forgotten.
- The path towards a sales goal should not be rigid. It serves as a guideline, and it cannot be prepared for everything. But it can provide the tools that your team needs to adapt for anything thrown your way.
- Obstacles are natural. With preparation, an obstacle can be a momentary wall to overcome. Find what is not working and adjust your tactics accordingly!
You are part of a team. Do not be afraid of seeking support from those around you. Their guidance, feedback, and accountability is key to staying on track with your goals. You cannot expect to improve without receiving outside perspectives.
Accelerate Your Sales Success with iDecide
iDecide is a powerful presentation tool that can help you achieve your sales goals by providing real-time guidance and insights into your sales process. Users can quickly assess the potential impact of different sales strategies and tactics, enabling them to make informed decisions that drive results. The platform provides a comprehensive view of your sales pipeline, allowing you to identify opportunities and risks and take action to optimize your sales performance while creating better sales goals. By leveraging the power of iDecide, you can accelerate your sales success and achieve your targets with greater speed and efficiency.
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Mike Boccia has been in Sales and Marketing for over 25 years and really honed his skills as a licensed advisor in the financial industry. He’s been the keynote speaker at conferences and training events worldwide and is the founder and CEO of iDecide Interactive.
Mike Boccia is now an author, speaker, coach, CEO, and most importantly, a father to his 2 beautiful daughters.