Academically speaking, as soon as you pass one semester in college, what’s the next goal? Passing the next semester.
Now, of course, saying “Just do it!” won’t do it.
There’s a process you need to follow — attending regular classes, learning by attempting assessments, working on projects, and scoring decently on all tests throughout.
For sales teams like yours, sales goals need to be set and achieved the same way. If you want to increase your annual revenue, just hosting a sales meet and declaring, “The goal for this year is to get more money flowing in” won’t do it. You need to peel the layers off that thought to uncover the metrics you need your sales team to meet throughout the year - to achieve your ultimate sales goal.
So, the real dilemma faced by a sales manager is:
“I know that we need to generate more revenue. I know that we need to better retain our existing customer base. I know that these goals are directly tied to the everyday sales activities of my team. But how do I connect the dots and formulate a sales strategy for them to achieve the ultimate sales goals?”
Ah, only if a sales leader had a penny for every time they had that thought! But, don’t you worry, we’ve got the best sales tips and tricks for you to lead your team with the right sales goals and benchmarks to achieve them. Before that, let’s get a clear snapshot of what sales goals are and why it is important for you to set effective goals for your team and for them to accomplish them.
What are sales goals and why does your team need them?
Sales goals are the big-picture objectives that you set for your sales team to improve their performance and hence, your bottom-line revenue in the long run. They are set to achieve over a long yet realistic time frame, and smaller sales quotas are attained to accomplish the bigger sales goals. Naturally, they are tied to your underlying sales metrics and sales activities that your reps achieve and perform on an everyday, weekly, monthly, or quarterly basis.
The best way to set sales goals is doing it the S.M.A.R.T. way.
S: Specific
M: Measurable
A: Attainable
R: Realistic
T: Time-bound
Unrealistic and unattainable sales goals can overwhelm your sales reps and kill their morale, urging them to look for a better organization where their efforts are appreciated and recognized. If you set S.M.A.R.T. sales goals for your team, it will take the excessive pressure off of their backs, motivating them to focus on achieving attainable sales goals.
You need to forecast realistic sales metrics and KPIs to set achievable team goals and use those figures as the reference to set smaller sales quotas. This will help improve your team members’ sales performance, boost their win rates, and ultimately increase your sales revenue.
If we go by the exam-ple that we discussed earlier, an academic goal can come in these shapes and forms:
- Scoring 80 percent in your final exams, improving last semester’s performance
- Getting at least 70+ marks in your math exam, where you’d scored poorly in the previous semester
- Choosing an elective that aligns with your future goals and scoring at least 80 percent in its final
Similarly, a sales goal can be increasing your revenue by 10 percent year over year, increasing your customer retention rate by 8 percent in the next quarter, or increasing the units sold for a particular product by 20 percent in the next two quarters.
In this article, we’re going to dive deeper into the sales goals examples that you can set for your entire team, with actionable tips for how to achieve them.
Examples of sales goals and tips to achieve them
Multiply sales revenue
The ‘why’ behind the revenue goal is pretty clear. Who wouldn’t want to sell more! Revenue-based sales goals are the primary goals for any organization - whether they are struggling to increase sales, have stagnant growth, or linear growth, but still want to generate more revenue by penetrating into new markets.
Examples of sales goals to increase revenue:
- Increase sales revenue by 13 percent in the next quarter
- Drive in $70,000 from Michigan in the next two quarters
- Each sales rep needs to generate at least $12,000 in the next quarter
Quick-fix for the issues that come with revenue-based goals
Revenue goals are the easiest to understand — they aim to increase the revenue, right? What else is there? Well, unrealistic revenue goals can pressurize and demoralize salespeople, defeating the purpose of having sales goals in the first place. It is because revenue only flows in if you close deals. So, if a sales rep had taken the prospect down the last stage of the sales funnel, but the deal doesn’t go through (due to certain circumstances that the rep has no control over,) their efforts are left unrecognized.
You can avoid this situation by combining the revenue goal with the activity-based goals. You can set small manageable goals for your team to reach the ultimate revenue goal.
Increase customer retention rate
The probability of selling to existing customers (60-70 percent) is so much higher than that of new customers (5-20 percent), giving businesses a concrete reason to retain their existing customer base. Moreover, research shows that a 5 percent in customer retention can increase a company’s profitability by 75 percent Phew, what whopping numbers! Right? You better get on the tracks and start calling up your clients you haven’t had a conversation with in so long.
Actionable tips to increase customer retention rate:
- Set recurring reminders for calling your existing clients on a regular basis. Ask them if they are facing any issues that they need help with. A commitment to customer experience results in up to 25 percent more customer retention and revenue than sales or marketing initiatives.
- Existing customers spend 33 percent more than new customers. Keep your ears open to identify up-sell and cross-sell opportunities while on call.
- It’s often possible that the client simply forgets to renew their subscription with you. That’s where you come in. Keep track of your customer’s renewal period, and initiate the renewal process in advance.
- You should always be aware of what your customers need and when they need it. Use sales intelligence software (like Clari Copilot) to revisit your customer calls and identify hidden signals (that you might have missed earlier) to see past the smokescreens and uncover customers’ pain points.
- Keep a tab on their social activities to stay updated if they are searching for a solution that you offer. And before they reach out to your competitor, you call them up with your old-friend voice and a wonderful sales pitch!
Minimize the customer acquisition cost
SaaS sales are tricky; they can skyrocket your CAC. CAC or Customer Acquisition Cost is essentially the cost of the sales and marketing efforts that you put in to acquire new customers. Although at first, it might seem beneficial to maximize your efforts if you are landing a big client win, that can end up taking away a huge bite of your revenue pie.
Don’t worry just yet; these tips are here for you:
- First and foremost, the major problem with a high CAC lies with the quality of leads. So, make sure that you get qualified leads that don’t fall off the funnel just after a short period of time. Utilize your sales skills in the discovery call to analyze if your prospects are a mutual fit.
- Analyze your sales cycle and see what’s the major chunk of your CAC. Set up a meeting with your marketing and finance teams and try to find a solution to cut down costs.
- Make sure that your Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) is greater than their CAC, which means that they should generate more profit in the long run. Ideally, you should try to hit an LTV : CAC ratio of 3:1.
Increase customer lifetime value
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) is the revenue that your customer contributes to your business over the time span of their relationship with your organization. To boost this value and increase the cash flow from your clients, you can set a sales goal to increase the CLV by 10 percent year over year.
LTV comes in once the deal is closed. So, how do you maximize revenue per client?
- Take frequent feedback in the form of NPS scores so you can nip any problems in the bud
- Make sure your product / service is well-designed
- Look for upsell / cross-sell opportunities
- Reward for referrals
Pro tip: leverage activity-based sales goals
Activity-based sales goals can set the path for every sales goal we have discussed so far. Moreover, they help you recognize the everyday efforts of your sales reps, keeping them motivated throughout the process of achieving their long-term sales goals. Activity goals are directly based on the everyday sales activities of a sales rep, such as making X number of calls or sending Y number of emails.
You can combine activity-based sales goals with your other sales goals to set short-term sales targets for your sales reps. Here’s a snapshot of activity-based goals in action:
- Send out 20 follow-up emails to every customer in the next quarter to retain them, and increase their CAC by X percent.
- Make 50 calls per day to the prospects based out of New Hampshire to hit the sales goal of increasing revenue by 8 percent in the next quarter.
Does the journey end at setting sales goals?
Setting the sales goals is just the beginning. As a sales manager, you need to carry this process forward by extensive sales coaching for your sales reps and tracking their progress. Clari Copilot, our sales intelligence software, can help you achieve this with its AI-powered sales coaching and analysis platform.
- Simplified app integration: With Clari Copilot, you can consolidate your sales data from various business sources and generate interactive call transcripts for quick sales analysis. The tool easily integrates with your CRM to give you an in-depth view of your sales reps’ deals and conversion rates. By leveraging that data, it generates actionable insights and sales metrics to help you track your business KPIs and sales team’s performance.
- Asynchronous, data-driven sales coaching: Your sales reps can quickly go through their long sales calls recordings and capture crucial easy-to-miss signals that they can leverage in their next call. Moreover, they can access the recordings of their top performers and learn the best and proven ways to handle tricky situations on call.
- Live assistance on call: Yes, you read that right. Clari Copilot proves to be your sales reps’ copilot in their hour of deepest need. It provides AI-driven sales insights such as real-time battle cards, key information to tackle sales objections, and competitor details based on the keywords used in the conversation.
Don’t just wing it when you have your Copilot to show you the light. To forecast, set, and achieve S.M.A.R.T. sales goals, book a demo with us today!