By A.J. Windle
What’s the correlation between hitting your sales goals and leprechauns? Well, since it’s March, let me tell you how.
St. Patrick’s Day is right around the corner, and do you know what that means? Leprechauns, rainbows, and giant pots of gold. But the challenging part is finding the gold. First, you must find the rainbow and get to the end before it disappears. But how do you get to the rainbow before that happens?
With clear goals, a plan, and discipline, you will find that pot of gold, metaphorically speaking, of course.
Closing sales deals is like the journey to finding your pot of gold—a lot of challenges, obstacles, and some tough leprechauns . . . I mean prospects, along the way.
Find your pot of gold by setting and hitting your sales goals. Here are twelve metrics that support hitting your sales goals you should consider.
1. Outreach Attempts and Interactions per Day: The more outreach attempts, the more potential opportunities. Salespeople don’t love prospecting, but if you don’t search for that pot of gold, you’ll never find it.
2. Contacts per Day: This metric will help you understand how the interaction attempts contribute to your ability to speak with people.
3. Opportunities Created: Do you know how many conversations are becoming real opportunities with prospects? A small number of opportunities can mean many things. You or your sales leader can help determine what is and isn’t working by analyzing sales metrics. For example:
- Are you or your sales team communicating clearly?
- What’s the method used to determine a qualified lead?
- Can you identify a training opportunity based on knowledge or skill gaps?
4. Proposals: Proposals are the next step of opportunities. Are you sending a proposal for every opportunity? If not, why? Watch how the increased number of opportunities translates to sending a proposal. Please pay close attention to what your proposals include and where they fit in the sales process.
5. Conversion Percentage: Conversion focuses on the ability to close meaningful deals. Setting goals for converting proposals is sales 101.
6. Average Order Value or Size: This is a great goal to set. Consider minimum average order values to ensure your company can perform the work with an elevated level of quality and be profitable.
7. Cost per Sale: Work with your clients to understand their cost per sale goal and make that transparent to the rest of the team. This metric is a great lag indicator and will help you dive into your lead goals should you struggle to meet your objective.
8. Length of Sales Cycle: Time is money, and while you should always take the time to make sure you are solving your customers’ problems and developing a great solution, you should make every effort to close quickly.
9. Retention Percentage: It’s harder and more expensive to get new customers, so take care of the ones you have. Set a goal for retaining your existing book of business.
10. Increase the Lifetime Value: It’s less expensive to sell additional services to your existing clients than to find new ones. Uncover their pain points. And if you have a solution, offer it.
11. New Sales Revenue: Every salesperson should know how much new business they’re responsible for bringing in. Setting new business sales goals is a fundamental metric to set and work toward achieving.
12. Profit Margins: Set a minimum margin goal and make sure you know how to price products and services accordingly. Based on the changing economic climate, you should continually evaluate the minimum margin goal.
Conclusion: All of you ambitious sales executives and sales leaders, it’s time to set new sales goals using the metrics we covered to measure your path or your teams’ path to find the pots of gold at the end of your rainbows. Then focus on hitting your sales goals.
A.J. Windle is the director of client engagement at Quality Contact Solutions. He is responsible for ensuring innovation and key initiatives are accomplished for each QCS client on an ongoing basis. A.J.’s background in call center management includes training and operations. Reach A.J. aj.windle@qualitycontactsolutions.com or 516-656-5106.