Setting targets is an integral part of implementing a solid sales practice. The entire team looks for the best way to reach a business deal and make the sale in record time. The implementation of Procurement Software can help pay attention to several essential things in determining sales goals. However, there are often challenges or accidental mistakes that can become obstacles.
Table of Content:
Table of Content
The following are some of the mistakes that often occur in setting sales goals:
Determine sales goal with percentage growth acceleration
In setting a target, a business must always pay attention to the percentage growth or increase in turnover every year. If the company has a turnover of IDR 150,000,000 in 2018 and then IDR 187,500,000 in 2019, it means that the percentage of growth is 25% per year.
One of the biggest mistakes business owners make is setting an unrealistic growth rate for their business. For example, below is historical business turnover data:
- 2018 = IDR 100,000,000.00
- 2019 = IDR 135,000,000.00
- 2020 = IDR 190,000,000.00
Then the business begins planning $ 380,000 for the next year’s sales goals
Based on these data, the annual income growth rate is
- 2019 = 35%
- 2020 = 41%
- 2021 = 100% (expectation)
It’s not that this percentage growth is impossible. Still, businesses must ensure turning their turnover from 41% to 100% in just a year. Most business owners who set ambitious sales goals don’t think about it in enough detail and, as a result, fail.
How to determine realistic sales goals?
Often companies are motivated to set targets as high as possible. You may think that setting very ambitious goals can help your team achieve more than setting much lower targets. Significant growth is likely, but there must still be a plan on how to achieve this target. Avoid putting the business under tremendous pressure. The rate of development that is deemed “reasonable” will vary depending on the company’s life, the industry, and how well it is operating.
No sales progress
Sales growth generally doesn’t happen by merely working hard, but also by working smarter. There should be a significant change in how you generate sales for any significant improvement. Once you have clear sales goals, it is necessary to analyze the gap between what you are targeting and what you already have to determine what increase is needed to achieve that percentage of sales.
Maybe you also need an ERP System to generate leads, more products and services to sell, or operations management that can generate accurate real-time data regarding company operations, such as inventory, production, and sales. Then make these changes, break them down into specific steps, and specify a completion date and the person responsible for each step.
Lack of accountability
One of the pain points companies face is a lack of understanding of what motivates sales staff. Consistency and clarity are essential for maintaining accountability across the team. To be accountable, employees need clear and consistent instructions about what they are held responsible for. Alignment is crucial for the sales team because everyone plays an essential role in the team’s success.
Help your team become more accountable by sharing leadership responsibilities. For example, have one person on your team responsible for processing weekly sales statistics, responsible for directing promotions, and another member responsible for social events. This, in turn, allows everyone to be more productive.
There is no adjustment method for setting goals
Sales goals must represent broad but achievable goals. But. Sometimes the team can achieve not all targets. It’s okay to adjust targets ‘halfway’ as long as you have the agreement to do so. Find out exactly the reason why this happened and make sure that the reasons are acceptable. Emphasize the steps you have taken to solve this problem and reconsider the goal. Then, work together to set customized targets and ways to avoid such miscalculations next time.
Conclusion
It is one of the important things to determine the sales target in the company. Therefore, avoid the common mistakes listed above. Set sales targets and optimally monitor all sales activities with sales software that is integrated with the CRM Sales System. Businesses must use the latest and most advanced technology to monitor the sales team’s performance. The only solution for your company is to use an automated solution from HashMicro. Try the demo here.
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