How can you define your sales objectives and stimulate your sales force?
The definition of clear and realistic sales objectives is essential to your company's sales strategy. Indeed, it is one of the essential conditions for a company's commercial success.
Setting sales targets is more than important: they describe precisely what your company wants to achieve over a given period. But for these objectives to be relevant, they need to be achievable, ambitious and motivating.
How do you set good sales targets? Why is it necessary to set good objectives? And what constitutes a "relevant objective"? How can you monitor the results of your objectives while motivating your sales teams?
Answers in this article.
What is a good sales objective?
A sales objective, also known as a sales target, is a clear and precise description of what your company wants to achieve over a given period, usually a year or more. As such, these objectives are essential to your company's overall sales and marketing strategy.
👉 Business objectives are numerous and can concern several areas within an organization, for example:
- financial: reaching a well-defined sales figure, or showing an increase of at least 10% in one year, etc.
- marketing: increasing the number of customers, improving conversion rates by 25%, etc.
- human resources: improve employer brand, increase headcount by 30%, etc.
- communication: increase communication budget by 10% to improve brand awareness, etc.
What are the sales objectives?
Qualitative versus quantitative objectives
It's common to instinctively think that sales objectives are necessarily quantified, and therefore quantitative. These include
- market share,
- sales figures,
- number of contacts and/or contracts,
- conversion rate, etc.
But this is not always the case. Qualitative objectives, although more difficult to measure, are nonetheless very important. They may include :
- improving brand image,
- customer satisfaction,
- team spirit,
- brand awareness, etc.
Short/medium/long-term objectives
To achieve their sales objectives effectively and on time, your sales reps need to know their deadlines.
- long-term objectives: these correspond to your company's sales strategy, have a major impact on your business, and usually require substantial resources.
- short/medium-term objectives : these enable you to track progress towards your more important objectives and be more effective at operational level.
👉 Tip: Break down your long-term goals by year and chop them up into smaller goals, to be achieved on a more regular monthly or weekly basis.
📣 Be careful, however, to take into account peak periods in your business. Adapt the timing of your objectives to fluctuations (for example, if you know that we don't make many sales during the summer).
Team objectives / individual objectives
Some objectives are assigned collectively or by team. For example, in the case of improving brand image, increasing market share and so on. Everyone will have the same goals.
But often, in order to achieve these objectives, it is necessary to define others that are more precise and more adapted to each individual. These individual or personal objectives make it possible to determine the goal to be achieved according to each person's tasks, business profile and productivity.
💡 It's important to define individual objectives, as not all employees have the same criteria.
👉 Example: A salesperson with several years' seniority and a very spontaneous profile may make more sales over the month or year than a salesperson who has just arrived with a small customer portfolio.
It is therefore essential to create collective sales objectives to boost team spirit and general motivation. At the same time, you need to personalize individual operational objectives to suit different profiles and determine achievable sales targets for each individual.
👉 Tip: To do this, you can create sales challenges with a collective response at the end, such as a sales bonus, a dinner at the company's expense, etc.
Method objectives/results objectives
When defining your sales objectives, you need to ask yourself whether you're looking to get your teams to work on a particular working method, or whether it's only the result that's important to you.
👉 Do you want to implement a specific sales action plan? Or let your sales force work as they wish, as long as results are achieved?
- Method objectives: relying on a precise method doesn't necessarily guarantee results, but in the long term it's good for business. This may involve, for example, adherence to a sales process or the use of a specific sales technique.
- Result objectives : these are often quantified targets, such as a sales figure to be reached, a conversion rate, a number of contracts signed, etc.
Why set sales targets?
To make informed choices and simplify decision-making
Making choices, whether strategic or operational, is much simpler when you clearly know your objective. So you can make your decisions on solid foundations.
👉 Example: If you know that your annual objective is to improve brand awareness among the 18-25 age group by 20%, you can launch a social networking campaign to achieve greater impact.
Motivating your resources
Motivation is much more important if your team knows what it has to achieve. What's more, the fact that the whole department or sales force is working towards a common, collective goal creates real teamwork and group cohesion.
To define relevant control and monitoring criteria
Defining clear, precise objectives gives you a solid basis on which to compare your choices and results. This optimizes the monitoring of your activity.
How to set sales objectives
The SMART method
In order to set relevant and achievable sales objectives, there's an effective and popular way of doing business: the SMART method. It is made up of 5 elements that list the characteristics of a good sales objective:
- S is for Specific : the objective must be clear and dedicated to a precise goal.
- M as in Measurable : a 20% increase in sales does not require the same efforts as a 4% increase.
- A as in Accessible: this point facilitates the acceptance of the objective by your teams.
- R as in Realistic: set your objectives gradually, in a cascading fashion, to keep the group motivated.
- T as in Time : the objective must have a precise deadline. Monthly or quarterlyize your sales objectives to better track their evolution over the year.
SMARTIES method
If you want to take the SMART method even further, you can add the following 3 points:
- I for Individual : as mentioned above, in some cases it's necessary to define individual objectives to generate greater involvement and ensure successful achievement by adapting objectives to different sales profiles.
- E as in Evolutive : it's important that your objectives are flexible, so that they can evolve as the project progresses. Don't hesitate to use business KPIs to monitor your objectives.
- S is for Simple: if your objective is simple, you'll be able to motivate your troops more effectively and ensure that your results are on target.
5 tips for keeping track of your sales targets
1 - Implement rapid feedback
It's essential to set up regular, almost instantaneous feedback so that you're always aware of how your sales targets are progressing. Maintain a constant link with the manager or sales rep in question, so that you can improve your actions if necessary.
2 - Prioritize transparency
Every sales rep must be able to follow his or her progress in real time , and see how he or she is doing in relation to his or her target, but also in relation to the rest of the team. Especially if the objective is primarily collective. Don't hesitate to set up a reporting or dashboard system to track your progress more clearly.
3 - Equip yourself with a specialized tool
There are software programs that can automate a large number of time-consuming sales tasks (KPI updates, progress tracking, sales reminders, etc.), and track the impact of your sales actions and progress towards your sales targets in real time.
This software comes in several forms:
- Sales management software,
- Commercial CRM,
- dashboard and KPI software, etc.
So as not to confuse you, we have selected for you 3 effective software packages that have already proved their worth:
🛠 Kestio is a 100% digital, customizable sales support platform specially designed to boost the sales force of VSEs and SMEs. Highly intuitive and easy to use, it not only gives you access to real-time tracking of your sales targets , but also lets you benefit from tailored support from certified sales experts.
🛠 monday.com CRM offers effective tracking and reporting features to monitor the progress of your objectives in real time. Thanks to clear, entertaining and customizable figures and dashboards, you can make decisions based on solid indicators that are constantly updated in line with your business.
🛠 The Sellsy CRMsuite helps you manage your entire sales cycle. In particular, it enables you to generate various customizable reports and dashboards, updated in real time, to track your performance, but also detect your opportunities. Visual and easy to use, Sellsy is perfect for efficiency-driven teams.
4 - Maintain a spirit of challenge
To keep your teams motivated, you can set up a reward system in the form of badges, bonuses or verbal recognition. This will boost the consistency, productivity and sales performance of your sales force.
5 - Optimize relations between sales reps
To help you achieve your sales objectives, it's essential to have a good relationship with your sales force. Listen to their needs, difficulties and successes. Accompany them where necessary, and show that you're there without being too intrusive.
Article translated from French