Sales are the lifeblood of your business. Not only that: increased sales are what help you grow to that next level. But if you’re putting too much of your time into other areas of your business, you can’t measure or even strategize on how to improve sales. Let’s look at what you should be doing, and how to develop sales goals for your small business.
Start with a Baseline
In order to grow your sales (and measure that growth) you have to know where you are right now. Dig into your accounting software or sales data to answer the following questions:
- How many customers have you averaged each month over the past year?
- What dollar amount is your average sale?
- Has there been any growth or shrinkage in your numbers over the past year?
Answering these questions gets you a baseline you can use to measure future results. Ideally, they’ll improve from where they are right now.
Decide What You Want to Achieve
You need to pinpoint exactly how much money you need to make. That might be hitting a certain dollar amount in sales, growing them by X%, or increasing sales a certain amount for a given product.
Try breaking up your sales goals into smaller ones. So if your goal is to increase sales by 30% by the end of 12 months, break that down into quarterly or monthly goals. That might look like:
- Sell $50,000 of our new candle line of products
- Office must sell $2,500 per week of new candle line
- Get every salesperson to boost his numbers by 15%
- Increase profit margin on all products by 5%
Each of these is a goal in and of itself, and they all should contribute to that overall goal of increasing sales by 30%.
Create and Assign Tasks to Accomplish Sales Goals
Goals won’t achieve themselves! You’ll need to create a list of items that need to happen in order to make your goals a reality. You might be the person to own these tasks, or you might need to assign them to others on your team.
So the action items for your sales goal might be:
- Hire 2 more salespeople
- Increase prices by 5%
- Invest $20,000 in marketing (social media, Facebook ads, direct mail promotions)
For each item, make sure it has an owner and a deadline. Many tasks can be (and should be) completed long before you measure results for that goal, so put them on a calendar and make sure the owner knows she’s responsible for it. For items that will take more time, it’s a good idea to meet with your team monthly to track their progress and remove any obstacles that are keeping the business from moving toward that goal.
Setting sales goals — even if you don’t accomplish them every time — keeps your sights set on the horizon. If you want to grow your business, you’ll need your focus on what you know your business can do and what you want it to do.
Defining your sales goals can be really tough without an organized sales process. Could you use some help with your sales? I have a gift for you. One of my favorite sales experts Jeffrey Gitomer and I are giving you a free, five-part webinar series called, “How to Really Make Sales.” You know Jeffrey from his New York Times Bestseller, “The Little Red Book of Selling.” Jeffrey is a master at sales and I know you’ll benefit greatly from our knowledge and advice during the “How to Really Make Sales” five-part webinar series.
Register here: http://www.getsales14.com.
Mark your calendar: The Webinar series will take place LIVE on GoToMeeting at 1pm and replay at 4pm and 7pm that same day.
- Thursday Oct. 30, 1pm ET – How to Attract Customers
- Thursday Nov. 6, 1pm ET – How to Network and Make an Appointment
- Wednesday Nov. 12, 1pm ET – How to Make a Sales Call
- Thursday Nov. 20, 1pm ET – How to Close a Sale
- Thursday Dec. 4, 1pm ET – How to Build a Relationship
If you miss one – not to worry, it will replay twice after it’s recorded, so it will be available for you when you are ready to learn.
Get your gift today:
- Visit this link: http://www.getsales14.com
- Enter your first name in the registration box
- Enter your email address beneath that
- Attend all five FREE sessions on attracting the right clients and customers into your business.
We only have 1,000 spots open for this series. Between Jeffrey’s contacts and mine, we’re going to fill those well before the start date of the event. I want you to get in before we reach capacity. Register here today.
“Business Data Analyzing” courtesy of adamr / www.freedigitalphotos.net
Great article. One other thing I would like to add is to remember that most businesses have a rough start. From the get go, you must accept the fact that there is a likely hood you will make a loss within your first year of operations. This is normal and tends to happen to every business, do not worry in that case, you will pick up a profits in the following years that will more than make up for that loss, just ensure that your product is appealing to your target public, and selling among other things.
Eric