In today’s #SalesInsights blog post, I’d like to discuss the topic of setting sales goals within your business. Goals should exist at every level of an organisation; individual, team and organisational. They drive change and growth and used as part of your coaching process, will reinforce and encourage a growth mindset and heighten sales performance effectiveness.
Don’t set too many goals
The first piece of advice I’d give you when it comes to setting goals for your sales team, is don’t go overboard; aim to stick with three goals at any one time. Having too many will result in uncertainty on where to focus and can also make the goals feel unachievable. This can often work against you as a team who feel overstretched, rather than push that bit further to reach their goals, will in fact convince themselves they are impossible to meet and put in less effort as a result.
Include your sales team in the goal setting process
People will be more likely to achieve the goal if they were involved in setting it, so make this a systematic part of your sales meetings. With your team together, invest that time in discussing plans and strategies that will have an impact going forward, leaving your team motivated about the (realistic) goals and targets they will be delivering.
Align your goals
Individual, team and organisational goals should all be aligned, ie individuals should be able to see how achievement of their individual goals will contribute to the achievement of the company goals. Make sure you have an effective dashboard in place in order for your team to see where they are aiming and how close they are to achieving specific goals. This will have a positive impact on an individual’s behaviour as they have something tangible to work towards.
Why set goals?
It may seem obvious, but setting goals is crucial in securing success within your sales team. Having those benchmarks in place encourages growth and development in individuals which in turn:
- promotes a focus on self-improvement
- places an emphasis on responsibility and accountability
- encourages the realisation of potential
- places an emphasis on effort (over outbound results), by breaking goals down into achievable actions
This also works to strengthen the coaching relationship between you as the sales leader and your sales team, allowing you to directly address gaps in capabilities within a ‘safe’ framework and coach a growth mindset attitude where your team see mistakes as an opportunity to learn and grow in order to improve their performance. In short, goal setting adds structure and purpose to the sales coaching process, providing the support, motivation and accountability that aids goal achievement and prevents goal abandonment.
If you have any more questions on goal setting, please feel free to contact me personally at steve@salestrong.co.uk.
Found this post helpful? Take a look at our ultimate guide to setting sales targets next.
