What’s the first thought when it comes to establishing sales targets? Your first instinct is probably to say ‘I want to increase sales’. Well, who doesn’t?

But having such a vague goal is more likely to achieve the opposite. Without a clear, well-defined target, there is no way to make measured progress. And without assessing your progress, you can’t tell if your strategy is working.

This can cause your sales team to lose momentum and engagement, resulting in an eventual decline in sales. It’s essential to set clear sales performance goals that give your team tangible targets to shoot for.

Following the SMART system

The SMART system is a simple way to summarise every element of your performance goals. By spelling it out this way, your sales team will find it much easier to get the results you need. Here is what SMART means:

S – Specific

A goal can only be achieved if it is precisely nailed down. A goal to ‘increase sales’ doesn’t even say by how much. You need to set a clear number to give your team something specific to shoot for – for example, ‘we need to increase sales by 20%’.

M – Measurable

Making your targets measurable means having a quantifiable outcome. What level of revenue do you aim to bring in each month and year? Making this measurable allows you to track your progress and assess whether you are on target.

A – Attainable

A goal is attainable when you possess the capacity to achieve it. You’ll need to consider factors like skills, staff numbers and motivation. Plan how all these factors will impact your potential, and optimise them for best results.

R – Realistic

This step focuses on the practical ability of an organisation to achieve a goal. Setting unrealistic targets doesn’t motivate people; in fact, it can be demoralising. Make sure your targets are achievable, or your staff will wonder why they should even bother at all.

T – Timely

You can’t have open-ended goals, or you’ll never know when they have been achieved. Designate a specific timeframe for every goal, accommodating intervals to check progress and redefine targets along the way.

An example of a SMART goal could be: ‘In 12 months, we will have increased our sales volume by 30%, reaching a 15% increase over the next 6 months.’ You get tangible results by focusing on achievable things, so create sales goals that fit the bill.

As a sales leader, you always have to find new ways to keep your sales team motivated using incentives and encouragement to boost their morale. Here are five ways to do just that :

Sales commissions

Traditionally, sales commissions have always been effective motivators. Set up a generous sales commission scheme that does not create competition amongst your team members but instead rewards personal efforts as well as the group’s collective achievements.

Nowadays, commissions and sales tracking are made easy by efficient sales commission software, so you don’t have to do any of the tedious math yourself. 

Personalised recognition and rewards

Commissions are usually cash rewards, and often the sales reps feel like they are only being paid rather than being rewarded. Sales commissions alone are not enough to make the team feel appreciated.

Including personalised non-cash rewards as additional compensation go a long way in recognising your team’s efforts. It does not have to be much – coupons, gift cards, tech gadgets, and recreational outings are some examples to give you an idea of cash-less rewards that might interest your staff. The more personalised the reward, the more deserving and special it feels. 

If you are feeling really generous you can offer the trip of a lifetime.  Send them somewhere like Cape Town, South Africa.  Find out more about Cape Town Tourism here.

Staff training

Some sales reps may be unsure of themselves, so educate your staff on their value and teach them new ideas on how to increase productivity.

You can prepare training sessions locally for your team or organise the attendance of remote or online seminar events. This adds value to your employees and encourages them to improve on their weaknesses. 

Set sales goals

Break down your annual sales goals and hold every rep accountable to smaller daily, weekly or monthly goals. Some reps may not realise their potential unless they have their sights on a target, and may be selling themselves short by lacking clear objectives.

However, don’t discourage your sales reps with very high sales goals or underestimate their performance with very low ones either; create sales goals that are fair and achievable. 

Exciting team building activities

A sales team is made up of individuals with unique talents, skills and capabilities; you need to bring them together as a unit to work as a team.

Conduct team-building exercises to encourage collaboration and communication among your sales reps. Don’t go for the cliché ‘tell us about yourself’ sit around, these need to be fun and exciting. Go out on a wilderness retreat, try out physical games, trivia, board game tournaments and the like.

The exercise should not elicit embarrassment or personal invasion; instead, focus on bridging gaps between team members by bringing out their collective strengths. 

Get in touch with us and find out more about incentivising your sales team using our sales commission software designed for small and medium-sized businesses.

 

A sales decline can be worrying for any business. The key is to get to the bottom of why you’ve had a drop in sales.

Once you’ve done this, you can put a plan in place to get your business back on track. So, with that being said, let’s take a look at some of the common reasons for a decline in sales :

Lack of motivation

Are your salespeople in a bit of a slump? A lack of motivation is something we all experience from time-to-time. However, it results in reduced productivity, and this causes sales to decline. There are a number of ways to get your employees back on track, from team bonding days to running sales competitions.

Ignoring your competition

Perhaps your competitors have just come out with a new and innovative marketing campaign combined with a top-of-the-line product that is unmatched in the industry?

If that’s the case, it’s of no surprise that your sales have declined. Your customers have moved to the competition. Competing businesses need to be on your radar all of the time, enabling you to react quickly and effectively. 

Old-school selling techniques

If your team is going to continue to reach sales targets, they need to move forward and stay up-to-date with the latest techniques. If your employees are still using old-school selling techniques (yes, we’re talking about door-to-door sales and cold calling!), it’s time fora change.

Poor sales and marketing alignment

Finally, another common reason for a decline in sales is when the people on your marketing team aren’t collaborating effectively with those in your sales team. If there have been recent changes in your marketing strategy or personnel, it is worth looking into this further. After all, your sales team depends on your marketing team to give them qualified leads. 

As you can see, there are a number of different reasons why you may have experienced a sales decline. One effective method for enhancing sales performance management to ensure you keep on track is by using Commissionly. This is the first cloud-based sales commission and sales compensation management web app that has been fully designed for SMEs.

Contact us today for more information.

This concept can sometimes be neglected when the management focus is on the overall picture. But, with modern sales performance management apps providing tracking insights and commission reports, a clear focus on individual performance is also valuable.

Calling out individual performance within the team

Professional sports team players are prone to say: ‘We win as a team, we lose as a team’. A cynic might say that the quote surfaces more often after the latter! The best coaches know that each player’s performance adds to, or detracts from, the overall team capabilities. 

Our Sales Commission Software app is a valuable tracking tool when assessing individual sales territory performance. Gaining such insights is particularly valuable in two situations:

# The team as a whole is successful, but one or more individuals within it are not

# Individuals put in a good performance, but the team as a whole does not attain its sales target

In the first scenario, under-performing individuals can escape censure. The leader is simply happy with the overall success and doesn’t want to ‘rock the boat’. In the second situation, a leader might give the whole team a hard time, and fail to positively recognise those who bucked the team trend and performed well. 

Sending the wrong signals to the team

Either of the above actions can cause on-going problems. The successful performers feel they don’t receive enough credit or attention when the overall picture is less positive. They could become unsettled and start to wonder if there are other employers who might appear to value them more.

While poorer performers begin to realise that it’s okay to carry on as they are; the more effective team members might wonder if they should accept that a less strenuous performance seems to be accepted.

Delivering specific and consistent performance assessment

A team works well together when each individual knows that their performance will be fairly assessed. A key to this is to use specific data to clearly demonstrate their main strengths or to highlight and help, through a manager’s own insights or training, with any weaknesses or difficulties. 

A truly valuable management tool

Our cloud-based Commission only sales commission software app is a highly valuable tool in providing leaders and managers with the information they need in setting and managing sales targets, ensuring performance-driven results, and delivering the necessary level of feedback to individuals.

Contact us now to learn how it can help your business.

When you’re running a busy sales team, it can be challenging and time-consuming to create sales goals for everyone.

Some sales managers will, therefore, urge staff to set sales targets for themselves to save time. Can this be an effective system for sales managers? Is there a more effective way?

The advantages of asking staff to create sales goals for themselves

When staff are responsible, they can set themselves goals aligned to their motivations. For instance, they might want to earn enough commission to go towards a deposit for a home, holiday or something else. They know how much they need and they might incorporate that when they create sales goals.

Likewise, when staff have set their own goals, they can feel satisfied when they’ve achieved them. It also helps them to become more responsible for their work, an important skill for career progression.

They are also consciously aware of their abilities, their current sales pipeline and their calendar. Therefore, they can add/remove sales targets to ensure they aren’t over-pressuring themselves when they might have booked a two-week holiday during the month.

The disadvantages of asking staff to create sales goals for themselves

Despite the advantages of staff setting their own targets, there are also some significant disadvantages.

Initially, staff might find it hard to align their own personal sales goals to company goals.For successful business growth and employee satisfaction, personal and company goals need to be balanced.

In addition, some staff might not be responsible enough to set sales goals and will, therefore, set themselves goals that are easy to attain. Managers should be involved, so they challenge staff to improve sales results without making goals impossible to achieve.

Finally, employees might be too inexperienced to set their own targets. Inexperience may mean they set targets too high, too low or those that aren’t relevant. Managers should, therefore, guide their employees.

An alternative to managers and staff

There is also a third option for managers and staff creating sales goals. Using sales goals software can help staff or managers to formulate goals based on numerous factors like past sales performance, company goals and seasonal variance. This helps to create sales targets free from bias that can be included when goals are set by managers and staff.

When it comes to the time to create sales goals, you will want to make sure you’re giving your sales team something inspiring.

A challenge offers them something to strive for and can improve results, but when something is too hard or seems impossible to achieve, it can have the opposite impact and can lessen results compared to what they could have been should you have aimed slightly lower.

The question is, how can you tell if a goal is realistic? Here are some of the ways you can determine whether your sales goals are correctly set :

1. Every salesperson misses the sales goals

One of the first things you need to look at is the statistics across the sales team. If you have 10% or 20% of your sales team missing their monthly or annual target, then those particular employees need help. However, if the majority of your team are missing targets, then there is something wrong with the goals that are being set for them.

This is where sales goals software can help. It can track records of staff and display who is meeting targets and who is not. If you’re noticing that more than a third of your staff aren’t meeting targets, you might need to reconsider reestablishing your sales goals.

2. Time of the year

Good sales performance software can also help you determine past performance and trends, which can help you make more realistic sales goals. Therefore, targets can be set based not just on the performance of the employee, but also on the expected market for the time of the year.

For instance, you might make great sales in July, but in August, that may not be the case. August could be a historically low period for you, and only by checking with your sales performance management software can you see that this is a trend during that time of year. By incorporating trends into the creation of your targets, you can be more realistic in setting goals.

3. Consider lead times

At the same time as considering the time of year, you also need to consider lead times for sales. Processes can be quite long, and if a sales team are running low on leads, they need time to build them back up. If there is no-one in the sales pipeline, then you aren’t going to get any sales.

This can be a particular problem if there is poor management by salespeople in the whole process.

Perhaps they focus on the close rather than the rest of the sales process. Therefore, ask your sales team how many leads they have in the pipeline and at what stage they are at. Thenyou can create sales goals based on current information. You can always tell salespeople they need to improve on their lead development and set those as targets as well, to build up sales over the longer period.

Using these three tips, you can create more realistic sales goals. If you create better sales goals, you will motivate your sales team and see better sales performance.

There are times when a few minor adjustments to sales compensation management are all that’s needed to add insight and incentivise your team.

Occasionally, in-depth analysis and major change are needed to breathe new life into your sales performance goals. Whether the adjustments you need to make are large or small, decisions around business software are critical.

Get it right and you stand to revolutionise your business and your sales. Sit back and do nothing and you could be missing out on a whole range of powerful, automated benefits.

1. In-depth understanding

Unlike traditional spreadsheets which are susceptible to human error, automated software tracks and analyses raw sales data in a totally reliable and comprehensive way.

However complex your operations, once the facts have been input, executives can tap in for an in-depth understanding of how their teams are achieving day-to-day, produce reports and commission payouts. Employees can rely on their sales data to accurately reflect their successes. When you stay informed, great things can happen. 

2. Motivation

Nothing is more useful to sales team leaders than having accurate information about individual staff performance in relation to commission tracking.

They can see at a glance how the work of each individual is impacting on department performance. That means they can dedicate their resources to identifying and supporting reps that are falling behind.

It is easy to look for patterns of achievement and add extra motivation when it’s needed to reach a particular sales goal. For instance, if one rep is great at closing sales for a particular service or product, a manager can tap into their skills in order to train others and build success across the whole team. 

3. The here and now

Unless you have money to burn and an army of super-accurate data inputters, the smart money is on web-based sales commission software. It means that your performance indicators, sales records and analyses are always up-to-date, and you can log into your data from anywhere. You know exactly where you stand, you can assess what the future holds, and you can plan ahead for the benefit of your business.

Sales commission software isn’t just for the bigguns. Small and medium-sized businesses are now able to invest in specialised automated dashboards that strip away the guesswork. If you are looking for increased productivity, escalating sales and a motivated team, check it out.

In any sales-driven business, setting goals and targets is key to driving increased revenue. Without a defined target to aim for, staff can lack the motivation to do any more than the minimum possible: which is bad news for your business, and your bank balance. 

In order to keep profits coming in, and to get the most from your staff, setting sales targets is essential. Thanks to the sales goals software built into the Commissionly app, you can quickly and easily assign goals to team members and their managers.

Create sales goals that work

Motivating sales staff to put in extra effort requires a thorough understanding of your current commission model. This includes current earnings  and sales of your sales team members, and the level of revenue needed to turn a profit per salesperson. Once you know how much your team is delivering, and your targets for company growth , you can start setting targets and goals which address the difference between the two figures and deliver the results through sales team compensation.

Always be realistic about your targets for your team. Goals that are set too high can actually reduce motivation. Staff need to feel that their targets are achievable. Be clear about the potential rewards for meeting or exceeding those targets, too. In addition to their regular commission, consider offering a bonus or treat for the best performers over a set week, month or quarter.

Using software for goal setting

With Commissionly, staff are already motivated by seeing their commission stack up in real time. You can also track their performance to ensure they are meeting their quota. However, you can go beyond this with all kinds of sales tools – such as leader boards to add a competitive element to the team setting.

Using the Commissionly app, you can set goals for staff, and amend them whenever required. You can follow a team member’s progress towards a target and automate the process of collecting sales and commission data for a faster, smoother experience. Plus, you can identify staff that are struggling to reach their targets and offer extra support – and you can create bigger, bolder challenges for your best performers, too!