Target increase. Yikes. Words that make every salesperson shiver. The last targets were hard enough to be on top of, let alone an increase. What you must remember, is every business must stretch themselves, increase the expectation of its employees if they want to grow. The key to successful target increases is judging it fairly, increase at a steady, consistent pace and make goals manageable for everyone involved and get focussing on your Lead Generation.
We know the way management look at these increases and the people on the front line (or phone lines!) is considerably different but equally as important. I want to look at this from both sides of the coin, and give you 5 important tips to stick to, to ensure everyone is happy with the changes.
For the Front Line
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Your Targets are Mutually Beneficial
It may seem to you, that the big guy is only concerned about their own pocket but that is simply not true. Target increase is mutually beneficial for you too! Commission schemes and bonuses left aside (but not forgotten), pushing yourself personally and setting yourself goals brings with it a whole array of great feelings associated with job satisfaction and personal growth.
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Increase your Lead Generation
You’re worried, we get it. Your pipeline seems small with no hope of getting any bigger. You’re going through each month squeaky bums, marginally hitting that goal, then your manager suggests you stretch that pipeline a little further. Sometimes, you just need a helping hand with your lead generation. More reach, more contacts, more conversations. Having software like GatorLeads can assist you by providing you with leads and gold dust information about those leads. What they’ve looked at, what they’re interested in and whether they’re ready for your pitch.
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Understand your Goals
It is vitally important that you understand what is expected of you and exactly what you need to do to hit those important objectives. If you don’t understand anything, anything at all ASK QUESTIONS! Communicate with your manager and express any concerns. If you don’t tell them, how can you ever expect them to improve your situation?
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Take Smaller Bitesize Goals
Don’t go all Shrek on us and swamp yourself. Break your targets up. For example, if your monthly or quarterly target seems like too big of a chunk to swallow, break that down into weekly bitesize pieces. For example, at CommuniGator, our business development team has a monthly goal of booking in 12 meetings each. Ouch. What we do, is break that down into 3 meetings a week. See, not so scary now!
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Work WITH your Team
Sales can be a dog eat dog world. It can feel that sometimes you’re working against your coworkers to reach your own personal sales objectives. By all means, do this, but you will fail. The same reason you get points for an assist in fantasy football, you can’t close that sale without the assistance from your business development team setting you up with that perfectly profiled account. Learn to work with the people around you, empower each other and everything will start to fall into place. At the end of the day, you’re all in the same boat doing a similar job.
For the Managers
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Objectives and Goals Must be Incentivised
Sales People are ambitious. That’s just a fact. Make sure if you are asking more of your team, you give them an incentive to do so. This will boost your team’s morale and give them a goal to aim for, making them far more productive.
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Set Team Goals and Individual Goals
You want your team to work together to achieve the best results. Give your team an objective as well as giving everyone their personal goal, this gives them something to work on together.
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Ensure your Team Understand Their Objectives
We cannot stress this point enough. There is nothing worse than your team misunderstanding their goals and the incentives that come hand in hand. The last thing you want is a few months in, your team getting de-motivated because they have misunderstood. Ensure that your instructions are clear, and your team are happy with what is expected.
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Make Sure your Objectives are Obtainable
For this part, I thought there would be no one better to advise than CommuniGator’s CEO Lee Chadwick “To me, you need to resist every urge to increase targets for the sake of it. This can only be done with a subtle mix of “carrot and stick”. The increase can only ever be in line with achievability, for example, history has proven that it can be done. In addition and to “sweeten” the deal it really should be done with extra incentives on achieving the new targets. They don’t need to be substantial, but they do need to be there.” He follows with “An unachievable incentive is no incentive at all”. Well said!
No matter where you are in the hierarchy of the business, the goals you set and the objectives you need to reach must be agreed on and understood by everyone involved. Give your business the highest chance of growing and succeeding. If you’re worried about your targets, take a listen to our hints and tips on Lead Generation.
