Say hello to beating your sales quota in 2019 with this expert advice from Christine Telyan, CEO of global tech company UENI.
The new fiscal year is fast approaching and, if you’ve had a tough summer, you’re not alone. They don’t talk about summer slowdowns, slides, and slumps for nothing.
But things are about to get a whole lot busier. For many business owners, fall can be a make or break time and, if you’re not maxing out your sales during these busy months, you might just end up missing those all-important end of year goals.
Working with thousands of small businesses, startups, and entrepreneurs, my team at UENI sees first-hand the challenges business people face as they come towards the end-of-the-year. What starts off as a marathon often becomes a grueling sprint.
Meeting your sales targets after a difficult summer can be a real challenge but, with a little planning and foresight, anything is possible. From getting a clear view of your company’s performance, to using the best available data to predict your upcoming sales spikes, here’s how to get beyond the summer sales slump to end 2019 on an all-time high.
5 Ways to Beat Your Sales Targets
1. Take stock of your business
Figuring out the current state of play is your first priority. You need to know where you are to work out where you’re going. First and foremost, focus on your current financial situation to assess how much the summer slump has set you back. According to one US Bank study, 82% of all business failures are due to cash flow mismanagement. By obtaining a detailed picture of your accounts, you limit the likelihood of becoming one of them.
Get to know your accountant again. How are your books looking? If you can work out the current gap between your projected sales targets and your sales to date, that will give you a good idea of where you need to get to. Once you know the size of the gap you can start thinking about how many sales you need to close it over the next three months. Not to mention how you’re going to drum them up to beat your sales quota.
2. Use data to plan ahead and beat your sales quota
Work out when the sales spikes are going to come and plan ahead accordingly. Knowing when people are likely to spend will help you allocate resources to meet your sales targets: whether that’s hiring extra staff to meet increased demand, giving your clients discounts and offers to seal the deal or putting money into a marketing campaign.
It also pays to have a precise understanding of wider market events and trends. Black Friday generated a record $6.22 billion in online sales last year but in recent years, it has tapered off in favor of greater spending over the course of the month, leading some commentators to coin the term Cyber November. This means it’s important not to put all your eggs in one basket.
Now’s the time to learn from your past experiences. Drawing on what you’ve done before will help enormously when it comes to switching your sales up a gear. Different sales strategies work for different types of businesses and you’ll want to adjust your sales tactics based on your customer base, what you sell and how you sell it.
It’s also important to be prepared to revise earlier targets as the market changes over the course of the year.
3. Focus on ROI
Money is the key metric here. Now’s not the time of year to go out looking for new sales leads. Work with what you’ve got: your established client base and strong leads.
80% of sales require at least five follow-ups after initial contact for completion but 92% of all sales reps give up before that crucial contact. This means just 8% of sales professionals are making 80% of all sales.
It’s vital to make sure that you and your team leave no stone unturned. There’s a reason 75% of companies say converting leads into customers is their top priority. Follow up on leads and concentrate on sealing the deal.
Reconsider the prospects in your current pipeline, revisit old deals that have gone cold, and put some energy into upselling and cross-selling. You’ll be surprised how quickly you can jump-start your revenue this way.
4. Create incentives to beat your sales quota
For any business, the two most important groups of people are your customers and your employees. Meeting your end of year targets hinges on your ability to motivate these two groups. Your customer needs to love your product, not like it. What employers sometimes forget is that this is also true of their staff.
Many of the best marketing hooks rely on creating an incentive for a customer to buy a product. In the same way, as a brand and an organization, you have to find a way to motivate the people selling it as well.
One SalesForce survey revealed that 79% of sales executives believe improving the productivity of existing sales reps is the best way of hitting targets. This is about long-term organizational culture but, in the short-term, you can certainly incentivize employees with sticks and carrots.
5. “Allow yourself and your team to fail, but fail fast”
Finally, being really ambitious about hitting your targets and beating your sales quota means you probably need to be prepared to make some mistakes along the way. Great products and great businesses don’t come by taking tentative, baby steps – just make sure you can course-correct quickly when you’ve got things wrong. The best businesses never succeeded without a little risk.