As a business owner, you must have a general idea of what you want your sales goals to be. Maybe you want a six-figure month. Maybe you want to hit a milestone with the number of customers you serve in one day. But where did you come up with that goal? Did it pop into your head one morning and sound achievable? Or did you actually get close to reaching that goal when it wasn’t even a goal?
When you are creating a sales goal for your business, you must determine if that goal is realistic. You must also determine that if your sales goal is a specific number of customers, how does that affect your revenue. After all, a lot more customers purchasing a couple of dollar items is not going to justify you having more staff on hand to reach the number you have in mind. You would actually lose revenue from that day since you would need to pay more staff members to be at work.
Although, I know that the excitement you would feel from reaching your goal would be almost enough to get over the fact you actually lost money!
Steps to Take to Create Goals that Make Sense for Your Business
1. Create Realistic Goals
If you continuously create sales goals and then never achieve them, you may not be setting goals that are realistic. You must ask yourself if the goals you are creating are honestly realistic for your business before you actually set them.
2. Educate Your Team
If your team knows everything they need to know about your products, it will be easier for them to sell them. Empowering your team through education is an excellent way to ensure your sales will continue to grow.
3. Incentivize Your Team
Your team may be more willing to help you reach your sales goals if they get a little incentive. You can pay them on a commission or simply add a little extra money to their paycheck if your goal is reached. Retention bonuses are an option for those companies who have clients that need to renew contracts.
How to Create and Monitor Your Sales Goals
1. Calculate Your Monthly Sales Goal
Having a monthly sales goal simply makes sense. To determine your monthly goal, you realistically should know what your annual sales goal is. This will allow you to divide that number by twelve to get your answer.
If you have no idea how much money you want to make in a year, you will have a little more work to do. The easiest way to get an answer is to total up all of your expenses (including payroll and your pay) and taxes, and then double it. That will give you a starting point. Your goal is to increase that number though, so your business really thrives.
2. Create a Waterfall Goal
It can be difficult to simply create a major goal, because the chances of you reaching it immediately are slim. Waterfall goals are excellent, because they allow you to slowly reach your sales goals over time. So, say you want to have a six-figure month but are thirty thousand dollars short. You can set a waterfall goal to increase your revenue by ten thousand dollars for the next three months. This will ensure you reach your target sales goal in three months.
And if that is too lofty for you, start with five thousand dollar increments. Yes, it will take you six months to reach your sales goal, but you will still get there.
3. Monitor Your Goal Progression
You can never just set a sales goal and then forget about them! The only way you can reach your sales goals is if you take the time to monitor your progression. This is why you must add this step into your process when you are creating goals that make sense.
You probably already have a system in place that allows you to see how your sales change over time. Utilize that system to track your goal progression and see if there are ways you can make changes to help you reach your goals.
Setting sales goals is easy. However, creating sales goals that make sense are a little more difficult. If you have been struggling with creating sales goals that make sense for your business, give these tips a try today. You may be surprised to see that you can reach any sales goals you create that actually make sense for your business.
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