How to Set Realistic Sales Goals
Sales goals provide employees with a focus and allow managers to make sure that company meets its targets. If you set goals that are too low, then employees may underperform whereas if goals are set too high, employees often become discouraged and do not even try to reach the targets. You must carefully weigh the financial needs of the business with the abilities of your staff. Realistic goals are measurable and attainable.
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Instructions
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Review the budget of your department or business and determine how many sales you need within a specified period of a month, quarter or year to make a profit. If you work for a large company, your supervisor may provide you with a budget for your department. If you run your own company, set yourself a growth goal for the year based on last year's sales and use that as the basis for your goal setting.
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Divide your overall sales goal between your staff. You should take into account employees' pay grades and level of experience when dividing up goals. In addition, newer members of staff may need smaller goals than experienced professionals.
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Decide how to measure your sales team's progress towards their individual goals. You can measure success based on sales units or dollar amounts. Use the same criteria for everyone and create a master chart that tracks the overall progress of your entire sales team.
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Divide the individual goals into daily and weekly targets. Ideally employees should hit their goals every day, but if they have a quiet day, they have the opportunity to get back on track and hit their weekly goal. The weekly goals should tie into the monthly goal and the sum total of monthly goals should equal the amount of the annual goals.
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Sit down with every sales person and help them to formulate an action plan to reach their sales goals. Share best practices and sales tips. Provide each employee with a chart to record his daily sales and set the expectation that every employee must turn in a sales report at the end of each day. Organize a team meeting once a week to discuss the overall team progress. If necessary, you can reassign goals during the year if some employees exceed expectations and others leave the company or prove incapable of achieving their goals.
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Tips & Warnings
Share success stories publicly, but deal with failures behind closed doors. You should foster a team environment by emphasizing tip sharing and--if possible--partner strong performers with newer employees. Never criticize struggling employees in public, and when you meet with employees one on one, provide tangible suggestions to help them get back on track.
