6 Pro Tips to Exceed Your Sales Goals

It's that time again. Time for another quarterly review.

And you're looking at the numbers, and you aren't happy.

Source

The sales figures are low. Way below where they should be. Way below where your sales goals are.

Do you wonder what went wrong? How can your sales team meet its goals for the next quarter? How can it exceed them?

Don't worry! You can stop pinching the bridge of your nose, and rubbing your brow like you're trying to scrub it off your face.

Below are 6 pro tips to help you exceed your sales goals.

What Are Sales Goals

So, what are sales goals?

Well, they're exactly what they sound like. They are your (and your sales teams') goals for selling.

But what does that actually mean? What does it look like?

Sales goals are the sales targets set to be met after a certain amount of time (monthly, quarterly, yearly, etc). You can set short-term sales goals or long-term sales goals, but either way, they should be realistic. When setting these goals, you'll want to consider what's achievable, and balanced with what you need to be profitable.

Sales goals differ from sales quotas, as they can be about different aspects of performance, rather than just revenue. However, that's not to say that sales quotas can't be an important aspect of sales goals.

Why Sales Goals Are Important

There's not just one reason why sales goals are important. They provide a few key functions.

1. Your sales goals can be a good metric to see whether your sales team is on track. If you are repeatedly smashing them out of the park, congratulations, you've probably got a good thing going. However, if your team is repeatedly coming up short, it's time to re-evaluate your sales strategy and process to determine why.
2. Good sales are indicative of what a company needs to hit to continue being profitable, expanding, or whatever else the goal of the company may be.
3. They provide incentives to your sales team to sell. If they have a goal they need to meet, then they are going to want to meet that goal – the best and most ambitious of your sales team will want and succeed in surpassing it.

Types of Sales Goals

When looking at sales numbers, you will probably have more than one goal in mind you'd like your team to hit, and they're probably not all about the same thing, or should be gone about in the same way.

It follows, then, that there are different types of sales goals.

There are sales goals for different periods of time, like:

• Daily sales goals
• Weekly sales goals
• Monthly sales goals
• Quarterly sales goals
• Yearly sales goals

But there are other types as well, that get into different aspects of selling than simply a length of time.

Some of these different types of sales goals are:

• Sales Performance Goals
• SMART Sales Objectives
• Waterfall Sales Goals
• High Priority Sales Goals
• Incentivized Sales Goals
• Stretch Sales Goals
• Inside Sales Goals
• Measurable Sales Goals

Sales Performance Goals

Sales performance goals are (typically short term) sales goals for individual sales reps used to set expectations of their roles and to measure their successes and capabilities. These sales goals will be based on the sales performance of the sales team, because its role within the company is to sell, even if not directly related to revenue.

SMART Sales Objectives

SMART sales objectives are sales goals written with the SMART criteria, meaning they are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound (see what they did there?). Sales goals created using the SMART criteria are sure to be practical goals with a set of parameters in place that makes them easier for your sales team to follow through on.

Waterfall Sales Goals

Waterfall sales goals use a series of smaller goals that increase with each goal to reach a larger goal (which was the original goal all along – how sneaky). The idea is to incrementally increase the workload for your sales reps, preventing them from being overwhelmed suddenly with a large number of expected extra calls, emails, sales, etc.

High Priority Sales Goals

High-priority sales goals are fairly self-explanatory. These are sales goals that you've identified as being the highest priority, or most important, for your sales reps to achieve. Having goals organized in the importance of priority helps your sales reps organize their time most effectively because they'll know which sales goals they should be putting the most effort into.

Incentivized Sales Goals

Incentivized sales goals are sales goals with an incentive for your sales team to achieve them. Often in the way of commissions, bonuses, or other rewards, incentivization can be a great way to motivate your sales reps into wanting to achieve their sales goals. Of course, it does! Who doesn't want extra cash or rewards for good work?

Stretch Sales Goals

Stretch sales goals are sales goals that are not just lofty, but practically unachievable given your current sales process/strategy. In the vein of meeting and exceeding your sales goals, stretch sales goals are not going to be your most practical choice. To meet a stretch sales goal may mean completely remodeling your current sales process and strategy.

Inside Sales Goals

Inside sales goals are your goals for sales strategies that can be done from in-office. These aren't your goals for the sales reps running around to prospective clients with PowerPoint presentations. A lot of these goals can be achieved by using a CRM so you can automate, or just complete more, inside sales strategies like emailing and calling.

Measurable Sales Goals

Measurable sales goals are, very simply, sales goals that can be measured. Typically, these sales goals can be tracked in their progression, and measured in their success. So that this is possible, measurable sales goals will typically have hard numbers and data attached to them. How else are you supposed to make them measurable?

How to Set Sales Goals

Briefly, it was mentioned in the definition of sales goals that goals in sales should be achievable and profitable.

Easier said than done, right?

Because if you and your sales team are constantly struggling to meet your sales goals, it could be your sales strategy and process, but it could also be that you aren't being realistic in your goal setting. Probably, it's both.

But first, let's start with setting sales goals.

So, here's how you set good sales goals that you can meet and will help the ole revenue margins:

1. Look at your company's sales goals and statistics from past years
2. Evaluate the company's current finances
3. Consider where your particular market is currently and where it's heading (or at least your best guess)
4. Understand the strengths and weaknesses of your sales team and process

From there, you should be able to establish realistic sales goals

Looking at Past Sales Goals and Stats

Obviously, when you're picking your sales goals, you're not plucking random numbers from thin air and tossing them on a spreadsheet. You need a basis – a place to start. To find that, you'll want to look at the statistics and sales goals from previous years. Which ones were achieved? Which weren't? When did you make the biggest numbers? Etc

Looking at Current Finances

Your sales goals shouldn't just be about what your sales team completed last year. It should also be about what your company has now and needs in the future.

When you're creating good sales goals, you'll want to have a clear picture in your mind of the amount of revenue your company needs to be generating. This is especially true if sales is your main or only stream of revenue.

Depending on the setup of the company, you may be looking specifically at the sales revenues, or the business as a whole.

You'll need to take into consideration:

• Employees' pay and commission potential
• If you plan on expanding your team
• Current software and equipment
• Any new software or equipment required
• Rent of your office building
• Any expanding or renovating being done to the office building
• … the list goes on!

This step is much easier if you already have your budgets done for the current and following year, so you can just analyze those. Everything in this step should've already been considered in developing those budgets.

Looking at your budgets is important to good sales goals as a whole, but particularly your sales quotas.

Looking at the Current Market

Your company doesn't exist in isolation. You'll need to keep your finger on the pulse of your industry in general. Has demand for yours been increasing? Decreasing? Remaining steady? This is something you'll need to know when aiming to set realistic goals.

Evaluating Your Sales Team and Process

Evaluating your sales team and sales process is twofold.

1. It allows you to identify strengths and weaknesses and areas of improvement. This in turn allows you to develop individual sales performance goals for your sales reps, and sales goals for improving your sales process.
2. It gives you an overall overview of the capacity and capabilities of your team that you can keep in mind when creating more revenue-based goals.

Using all the information you've gathered from the four previous steps, you should be able to cobble together different revenue-based and sales performance goals. These goals may involve a combination of several different types of sales goals discussed in the previous section.

Long Term Sales Goals vs. Short Term Sales Goals

When it comes to setting good sales goals, both long-term sales goals and short-term sales goals have their uses and their limits.

A comparison of the two types and when to use them has been outlined in the table below:

Short term goals can be an effective tool to use for long term goals. Short-term goals can act as steps or benchmarks along the way to achieving the bigger picture long-term goals.

Short-term sales goals and long-term sales goals examples will be included in the table below.

Sales Goals Examples

6 Pro Tips On How to Meet and Exceed Sales Goals

Create a Sales Plan

Good sales goals shouldn't exist in isolation as a solitary report. To make sales goals more achievable, you'll want to create them as part of a killer sales plan.

A sales plan will ensure you already have a blueprint for your sales team to follow, as it'll include an action plan for your sales reps, and KPIs. You'll already have done the work in defining your sales goals for sales reps and outlining what needs to be done to achieve them, and it'll be laid out in a document for your sales team to review and act upon.

Use a Combination of Short Term Sales Goals and Long Term Sales Goals

Really, this step is part of the goal creation stage. But, it'll be a lot easier for your sales reps to hit your long-term sales goals if you break them down into short-term goals as well. It will also be easier to monitor if your sales team is on track to hit your long-term goals.

Make Adjustments to Your Sales Process

This may be covered in your sales plan, or even encompassed in part of your sales goals themselves, but improving your sales process is a must for exceeding sales goals.

You'll need to know exactly where in the sales cycle you're losing prospects, or it's taking too long a time for them to move to the next step, or you often have gaps with no prospects, etc.

Any issues in your sales process, you're going to need to identify them and fix them so it's a smooth process with a quick turnaround.

Obviously, it's not as simple as just magically fixing those areas, but there are a few ways these issues can be addressed, like with:

• A/B Testing
• Waterfall Sales Goals
• Sales Performance Goals

It may seem counterintuitive to try and adjust your sales process so you can achieve your sales goals by adding more goals … but without a working sales process, it'll be much harder to hit any of your sales goals, anyway.

Another way to adjust your sales process, if you haven't done it already, is to adopt a sales CRM.

Adopt a Sales CRM

Nothing makes meeting sales goals easier than adopting a sales CRM. As well as being great for monitoring sales goals progression, CRMs are also incredible tools for making sales more efficient to accomplish. You can use CRMS to automate different processes, like emails, generate new leads, collect client data, etc.

Ringy, for instance, offers features such as SMS and email drip campaigns, lead management, click-to-call dialing, and more. These are all features that will help your sales process move smoothly, so you can make more sales and exceed more sales goals.

You can request a free demo to learn more about what Ringy offers.

Track the Progression of Your Sales Goals

This may seem obvious, but it's important to track the progression of your sales goals. If you're tracking sales goals, you'll know if adjustments need to be made to complete them. Without that consistent monitoring, you could be caught unawares if at the end of the year, your sales team has come up short in accomplishing any of your sales goals.

One easy way to track the progression of your sales goals is to use a sales CRM, as mentioned in the tip above. This way you (or your sales reps) can be monitoring the goals daily, weekly, monthly, etc, so you're always aware of where your team is in relation to your sales goals.

Ensure Everyone on Your Sales Team is on the Same Page

To exceed your sales goals, you'll want to make sure everyone on your sales team is on the same page.

This means you'll want to ensure everyone knows what the long and short-term sales goals for sales reps and goals for the company are (well, the relevant ones) and that everyone is working as a team to accomplish those goals. All your sales reps will be working off of the same sales plan, even if their roles, actions, and sales goals under the plan are different. So you need your sales team to be working as a team. (Although a little healthy competition isn't a bad thing, either.)

However, it also means you'll want to make sure your sales team is all capable. If you feel some of your sales reps are underperforming, it may be time to invest in (more) training for them. You want to make sure all your sales reps have all the tools and skills necessary to perform at their best.

There you have it. Those are 6 pro tips to help you meet and exceed your sales goals this quarter, year, career … whatever you need them for!

FAQ

I don't know how to improve sales goals

There are many different ways to improve sales goals. Start with ensuring you're creating realistic sales goals, as outlined above, and then use our 6 pro tips to ensure you meet and exceed those sales goals.

I don't know how to achieve sales goals in retail

Retail sales goals can be a different ballgame, in that you'll probably be doing much more face-to-face with individual customers to make your sales. However, that doesn't mean you can't still use (at least some of) our pro tips.

If you aren't comfortable in retail selling, or feel like you lack the skill to do it well, focus particularly on tip 6 and see if there is any training available to you to help you out.

In Summary

So, to sum up, if you want to smash your sales goals this year, make sure you're making realistic, good sales goals by:

1. Looking at your company's sales goals and statistics from past years
2. Evaluating the company's current finances
3. Considering where your particular market is currently and where it's heading
4. Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of your sales team and process

And then, exceeding those sales goals by:

1. Creating a sales plan
2. Using a combination of short-term sales goals and long-term sales goals
3. Making adjustments to your sales process
4. Adopting a CRM
5. Tracking the progression of your sales goals
6. Ensuring everyone on your sales team is on the same page

Sales goals are an important part of creating a comprehensive plan of attack in sales so the members of your sales team can perform to the best of their abilities.

And with these 6 tips, you know that they will be.

So get out there and start selling! Put these tips to the test and exceed your sales goals. You can make this quarter your best yet.

And psst! If you need a place to start, how about with a sales CRM that offers a free demo, and agent coaching upon subscription.