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Your Sales People Will Miss Quota - Unless You Give Them This...

Guest post by: Lee Salz

Article Overview: The beginning of the calendar year is a milestone in the sales manager/sales person relationship - marked by the issuance of sales quotas. In this episode of the Sales Management Minute, learn the key to ensuring your sales people are armed with the tools they need to achieve quota.

Your Sales People Will Miss Quota - Unless You Give Them This...

The beginning of the calendar year marks a relationship milestone between sales people and their managers. It's the issuance of annual quotas! One by one, sales people meet with their managers and are assigned their annual goals. With a handshake and hope, each sales person sets out on a New Year quest for success, but something is missing from this recipe. When we talk about the attributes of great sales people, one of the items at the top of the list is "goal-oriented" inferring that these people run through walls to meet targets. While we say that, we don't connect all of the dots necessary to leverage the true power of this attribute.

At one of the spectrum is an annual quota and, at the other end, is a hard working sales person. But, where is the bridge connecting these? In most cases there isn't one, but rather both management and sales people keep their fingers crossed hoping that the hard work translates into quota achievement. Sometimes that works, but not often enough for sales leaders (or their sales people) to sleep well at night.

The missing element is what I call a Sales Success Plan Model. This model shows the sales person the key actions with corresponding activity levels that leads to quota achievement. The model addresses:

•Average sale size

•Number of sales needed to achieve revenue quota

•Number of proposals to generate a sale

•Number of meetings to generate a proposal

•Number of leads to generate a meeting

Given your organization, I'm sure you have more to add to the list. The activity levels are assigned to weeks of the year so that the "goal-oriented sales person" has a clear focus of what needs to be done and when...leading to the achievement of the annual goal.

"If I get 4 meetings with new prospects per week, I'll have 2 proposals out and I'll will win one. I do that, I hit my numbers for the year...and that new car is mine!"

Before you present quotas to your sales people, prepare Sales Success Plan Models which create roadmaps to achieve the goals. Use your CRM and reporting systems to make sure your sales people stay on track for success.

See you next time on the Sales Management Minute.

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Article Tags: lee salz, sales architects, sales business plan, sales management strategist



Related Forum Posts
Re: Traffic! How do you get it? - Give away plenty of free valuable stuff. People will be grateful of your gift and will stick around to see what else you have to offer.
Online Sales and Marketing vs Traditional - Hi Evan, I am noticing that many of the posts in the Sales/Marketing section deal with online marketing, SEM and and SEO and Affiliates. I was wondering if it might be a good idea to separate that section into two; 1) Online Sales and Marketing; 2) Traditional Sales and Marketing
Re: The Best Method for Online Marketing - Thanks for the feedback GT, cartoons, pics of this or that all have their place - believe it is called Facebook. Miss the cartoon strips from the USA
Re: How Much Of Ourselves Should We Give Away...? - People love free stuffs a lot and sometimes most of the free loafers are not always buyer,but this should not stop you from giving away free stuff. Give as much as possible and some of them one day will buy from you and you should be abler to monetize the free stuff by loading them with links and advertising your product inside
Re: Online Sales and Marketing vs Traditional - [quote="ltrahan":31w9r2iz]Hi Evan, I am noticing that many of the posts in the Sales/Marketing section deal with online marketing, SEM and and SEO and Affiliates. I was wondering if it might be a good idea to separate that section into two; 1) Online Sales and Marketing; 2) Traditional Sales and Marketing[/quote:31w9r2iz] I second the request...


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