Wow! That title sure seems strange coming from me, doesn’t it?
The truth is, though, that when you build your sales plans to make your goal, chances are pretty high that you will MISS your goal!!
Reason is simple: Things don’t always go as planned.
Many of you are building your 2014 sales goals as you read this, and if you’re not, you need to start. It’s one thing to set a goal, but it’s another to have a plan that allows you to make (and exceed!) the goal.
Let’s use an easy example.
We’ll say you want to achieve $1 million in sales next year. Fine, nothing wrong with that number. In breaking it down, though, you need to plan on building toward a number larger than $1 million.
To hit your number of $1 million in sales, you may need to plan to get to $1.4 million. This allows for customers or sales that don’t come through as expected.
Plan for this upfront. Don’t wait until you’re half way through the year to start the process.
Too many salespeople wait too long to build contingency plans, and in so doing, they never achieve their numbers.
I’m not a fan of contingency plans, so I’d rather see you doing a lot of pro-active planning instead.
What makes it so effective is by building your plan like this in advance, you’re more likely to achieve your goal. Better yet is if everything does fall into place, you will wind up achieving a number far above your stated goal.
Sales managers who are reading this need to make sure each salesperson follows through in their pre-planning.
Top performers will, but the average and below-average won’t, and come half-way through the year, you’ll be staring at a sales goal that is increasingly harder to hit.
Don’t build plans to make your goal. Aim higher!
Copyright 2013, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter.” Sales Motivation Blog.
