Are you a bit hit-and-miss with your sales goals?

If so, it’s okay; there are key strategies for setting and meeting goals that you may be missing. The top two ways to meet sales goal are 1) setting SMART goals and 2) creating an action plan for your goals. This guide will teach you how to do both of these things so you can not only meet your goals but crush them.

Set SMART Goals

Before you find out how to meet your goals, you have to set your goals. To set your goals and set you up for success, we’re going to use the SMART system. You may have heard about the importance of SMART goals before, but I’m going to go over them just in case. The SMART goal setting system is a fundamental step to making sure you achieve your goals.

SMART stands for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, & time-related. You should make sure your goal meets each of these qualities. Let’s explore what each of these mean and how to apply them to your goals.

Specific

Setting a specific goal is very important. Be clear on exactly what you want to achieve and why you want to achieve it. How do you want to increase your sales figures? Increasing number of phone calls? Sending more emails? Adjusting your sales pitch?

Measurable

The easiest way to make a goal measurable is to make it something you can count. Making a certain number of calls or hitting a certain percentage of sales is easily measurable.

Attainable

Don’t make your goals too lofty! Unattainable goals decrease motivation and set you up for failure. Use your past experience and knowledge of your resources to assess whether your goal is truly attainable.

Relevant

Be sure to double-check that your goal will affect your sales performance. Although making a certain number of calls in a day may sound helpful, it’s possible that calls don’t actually affect your bottom line much. Look through past data to see what will be the most effective to improve.

Time-Related

Setting your goal to a certain time frame will limit your goal in a positive way. A time frame allows you to assess your progress. And here’s the best part: you’ll know when you’re done!

Examples

To put it all together, here’s an example from OnFocux: “Increase the conversion of qualified contacts into customers by 30% (from 50 to 65 clients monthly) in order to increase profitability and productivity.” This goal works because it’s very specific, has measurable qualities, and is relevant to the company’s larger goals. However, it doesn’t have a time frame. Since they’re increasing monthly conversions, they may want to set the ultimate goal to three months and check on their progress monthly.

Creating an Action Plan

Now that you have a SMART goal, your next step should be to create an action plan. Without an action plan, your goals will just be goals. So this phase is all about empowering you to make these goals happen.

The work you did earlier established your who, what, when, where, and why. Now you create your ‘how.’

Your action plan should consist of several concrete, attainable steps. Break them down as much as you need, such as by day or week. This will make your plan seem less intimidating and give you more motivation.

For example, let’s say your goal is to increase conversion of qualified leads to customers by 15% in the next month. Your plan may be to send an email to 5 leads per day, and perform product demos twice a week. Now you know exactly what you should be doing at any point in a day, week, or month. This also makes it easier to assess if you’re behind on your goal (which we’ll cover in a bit.)

Once you have that, you should put it all together with your SMART goal. Ideally, place them in the same document or physical space so you can easily see what you’re doing and why.

Check-up

Every week (maybe even every day) evaluate where you are in reaching your goal. Because you made your goal measurable, you should be able to easily see how well you’re doing. Use this check-up to celebrate your progress and catch up if you’re behind.

If you’re behind, don’t worry! Knowing that you’re behind is the first step to course-correcting.

The next step to course-correcting is to figure out what is preventing you from achieving your goal. Is there something in the process that’s slowing you down? Take another look at your action plan and see if you can make a few adjustments.

Refine

It’s generally recommended that you set new sales goals every month. This allows you and your team to stay flexible, while still having enough time to implement real change. These goals should be relevant to your team’s annual goals.

Conclusion

Still with me? I know that was a lot, but I wanted to be thorough so you know exactly what to do. But rest assured, if you follow these steps you’ll be on your way to crushing your goals and boosting your sales. Good luck and happy selling!

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