Meeting Sales Targets - Gaby Awad

Gaby Awad - “Buying Customers”

S4 Episode 5: Meeting Sales Targets

Introduction

My name is Gaby Awad AKA The Coach on Wheels (you have to watch my YouTube channel to know why 😉), and I am your host for the BUYING CUSTOMERS radio show 🔥🔥🔥

It would be awesome if I could hear from you in real time during the show. If you’re listening live or to one of the recordings, you can always connect and interact with us on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter at IBGRNetwork.

Listen LIVE every Wednesday 12:00 pm to 1:00 pm: GMT 

 
Show Objectives 
Your sales objectives are your brand’s clear-cut, defined goals.

You can look at your sales objectives as a way to provide clear direction for your sales team to follow.

Without SMART sales goals, there’s no clarity on what needs to be accomplished, what numbers are we trying to meet, and your business will struggle to grow. By implementing a straightforward sales plan, your company will have the goals it wants to achieve and the execution plan to meet those sales objectives.

You’ll be far more likely to reach your goals when they are defined, outlined, and compiled into a clear list of measurable sales objectives

Key Issues 
With big data and the digital age, it is sometimes difficult to measure our sales targets. 

• No sales objectives, just ad-hoc closing 
• Creating vague, not SMART goals
• No metrics in place to help us take calculated business decisions
• Not testing and measuring sales activities, pipeline, and results 

What You Need to Know 

• How to set sales targets that are aligned to what the business is trying to accomplish
• How to think MSART sales goals
• What to measure and how to measure it?

What Should be Measures 

Let’s group them into 3 main categories:

1. Sales Activities Metrics
When it comes to the right sales activities metrics, we need to keep in mind that sales is a function of the number of RIGHT activities. This means that if you want to measure your team’s performance, you need to start by tracking their daily activities. The next three metrics in this category that we will discuss, will help you ensure that your sales team is not only taking the right actions to generate deals, but also that those actions are efficiently leading to sales.

So let’s look at the three key sales activity metrics:

Number of Activities
This is the number of activities like calls, meetings, demonstration, emails your team  performed in a given time period.

Activity Efficiency Ratios
Ratios of “Calls-to-Connections,” Connections-to-Meetings,” Meetings Scheduled-to-pportunities”

2. Pipeline Metrics, and Sales Funnel Conversions and Win Rate
Conversion rate for closed opportunities. This metric tells you how are opportunities progressing through the funnel? What percentage of opportunities are you converting into Won Deals? And, in which stages of the sales process do you have the most drop off?

Duration, or Sales Cycle by Stage
Another important metrics to track under the pipeline metrics category is the duration, or how long your Won and Lost opportunities spend in each sales stage on average.

Metrics-Driven Sales Forecast
Revenue prediction based on historical conversion rates and number of opportunities currently in the pipeline.

3. Results Metrics

Closed Sales vs. Goals

This is the number and value of deals your team have won compared to their goals. It should tell you things like: Are your people hitting their numbers? And, how many deals does a given person need to book over the remainder of the selling period to hit his/her goals? 

Won/Lost Analysis by Close Date
This metric tells you how well your team performed at converting opportunities into Won Deals
during a given time period and how your team’s Win Rate is changing over time. 

Sales Cycle
This is the average sales cycle by team member. 


What You Need to Do 
Here are the 9 steps sales action plan to meet your targets. 

1. Identify Your Ideal Clients
If you want to achieve success in any aspect of your sales strategy, you need to start by identifying the people that you want to target.

Get together with your sales team and ask:

• Which clients deliver the most long-term value?
• What company size are you targeting?
• Where did your best customers come from (i.e. cold calls, canvassing, word of mouth)

Your sales action plan needs to include a complete overview of how to find and nurture your clients and it should be aligned with your Marketing Plan.

2. Assess Historical Performance
Unless you’re a brand-new business, you should have some room to learn from your past mistakes and successes. Look back over your previous wins and losses and ask yourself:

• Which strategies led to the most revenue?
• Were there certain months or seasons where you were more likely to reach your quota?
• Which of your team members were most successful, and why?

Examining your historical performance will help you to get a better idea of where your current customers and prospects come from.

3. Set SMART Goals
For instance, you might have achieved your sales quota 60% of the time in the last year, but by the end of this year, you want to achieve an 80% success rate.

Ask yourself:

• What is the big picture destination for my team? (A 100% quota success rate)
• Annual sales goals? (Maybe a 20% increase per year)
• Quarterly objectives? (Something closer to 5%)
• What can sales teams do to improve monthly?
• What is my team going to aim for each day?

Outline what you want to go and how you’re going to get there.

4. Leverage on Resources 
Now you know where you’re going, what tools do you need to accelerate your opportunities and empower your teams?

The most essential resource you have is your salespeople, so ensure that you have the right number of people on board to reach your target. This includes building an enticing commission structure that motivates employees to succeed.

Next, invest in the tools and technologies that will power your success. Tools like CRM tools, analytics, comparison charts, videos, catalogues, etc.

Train your team on those tools, assign mentors to new team members, and holding one-on-one meetings.

5. Assign Territories
Now it’s time to make sure that there’s limited overlap in your teams. It’s hard to reach your goals when everyone is focused on selling to the same area.

Assigning territories ensures that your sales team is targeting the right customers, in the right areas, and ultimately eliminates costly redundancies.

Make sure your most valuable and profitable reps are working on the biggest accounts. Remember, you can assign your territories by everything from geography, to customer type, sales potential, and industry.

6. Develop Scripts
Now your sales team knows where it’s going to be focusing; it’s time to guide them in accelerating their chances of sales. For instance, you can build templates for phone calls, follow ups, emails, and more.

To guide your scripts, remember to focus on addressing the pain points of your customers. Remember – people buy emotionally, and justify rationally.

Encourage your team members to ask intelligent questions and to focus on finding solutions to their problems in the scripts that you create. As a general rule, the conversation should have a 70:30 split on the side of the customer.

7. Set Minimum Daily Sales Activities
Remember, although it’s valuable to challenge employees, you still need to be realistic. Asking staff to accomplish more than they’re reasonably capable of could lead to disengagement.

Measure and track things like: Leads, Contacts, Follow-ups, Referrals Earned, etc.

8. Accountability
Salespeople are often competitive, and like a chance to prove themselves against their peers. You could use a leaderboard in your workplace to celebrate and showcase your most successful salespeople.

Consider pairing your top performers with new or lower performing people for some cross-training and mentoring.

9. Test & MeasureA lot of sales teams fail to track crucial data and KPIs, and this often means that they don’t know what they need to do to improve their chances of success.

By measuring the performance of your team at every level, you can uncover your top-performing people, figure out which ones need more training, and even pinpoint which sales strategies aren’t impacting the bottom line.

Ultimately, there’s no one-size-fits-all strategy to delivering excellent sales numbers and outcomes. The key to success is to figure out what works for your team by examining your processes, people, and even your customers.

Designing a good sales action plan will help to guide your employees towards more successful results, while making sure that they have the guidance that they need to thrive.


Shows 

• Previous: Meeting Marketing Targets
• Next: Season 4 Episode 6 -  You Are the Brand - How to find your USP and use it in marketing and sales.

 
Written by Gaby Awad 
 
As a Business and Executive Coach, Gaby helps business owners, leaders, and teams grow and achieve their goals through alignment, business re-education, coaching, and mentoring. He has more than 25 years of experience in executive positions and transforming businesses.

Currently he is the Franchise Owner of ActionCOACH in Lebanon and in this position he also coaches Business Owners, CEOs and other top level executives. Gaby hold international accreditations as certified coach from ActionCOACH, Marshall Goldsmith, The John Maxwell Team, and Jeffrey Gitomer Sales Academy. Gaby is also the founder of Good Session Coaching,  an online learning platform for executives and business professionals where leaders can go through self-paced learning.

You can connect with Gaby on any of his seriously social platforms
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Send an email: gabyawad@actioncoach.com

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