Education

Reaching Your Sales Goals

November 5, 2005 | By: deaneparkes

I am often asked by business owners for suggestions to help increase their sales. In most cases when I ask what are their sales targets or how many customers at what average sale do they need to do to reach the target, they do not know. If you do not know where it is you want to get to how will you know when you arrive?

Does your business have clear sales targets? If not I am certain you have financial stress.

Having clear sales targets set out at the start of each month is a good start to having a winning business. It also helps you find staff that love to win. Hiring staff who like to sell and enjoy reaching sales targets will make your job a lot easier.

When I began in sales at a company years ago our sales manager told us if we increased sales by 20% in the year the company would make profit. A year later after increasing the sales by 25% he told us the same thing; if we increased sales by 20% they would make profit. This bothered me as it made us feel like losers even though we had accomplished our goal.

Sales targets have to be well thought out and when reached everyone should celebrate!

There is just not enough celebration in the business world.

In most small business there is no thought given to the importance of setting sales goals, making everyone aware of them and then going out ‘together’ and reaching them. Most small business owners feel they should carry the entire stress load of making sure sales are attained. They then put stress on their staff if sales are below expectations. This is a very dysfunctional and poor way to run a business.

Clear expectations – In the late 70s I owned a small chain of supplement stores. My partner was very goal orientated and when we put a manager in charge of a store we had very clear sale goals. Every day they filled out a form that showed the daily sales, the number of customers and the average sales per customer. This monthly sales sheet had the month goal at the top and was a quick way to see how we were doing during the month toward reaching goal. We knew there really were only 2 ways to increase sales – attract more customers or sell more product to the customers who came in. We also knew if we treated the customers well they would keep coming back. By having clear sales targets you will find your level of customer service going up.

Reward what gets done – I was giving a seminar recently when I was asked ‘how do you think retail staff should be paid?’ I was a little tentative in giving as answer as the crowd was a mix of owners and their staff and my views may not sit well with everyone.

Here are a couple of ideas of paying sales staff:

• Pay them a base wage – increase this whenever you have to or as their skill level increases. This is limited as there is no incentive to do anything beyond the basic job duty.
• Pay the basic wage and a bonus if specific sales targets are met – This can be done on an individual basis, as a group, by department or on total sales. The key is to set sales targets which help the business reach specific sales targets that build a strong financially secure business. THIS IS A WINNING FORMULA. Another key is the sales ‘score’ must be updated daily, everyone must be in the know as it directly affects their personal income. If you have hired sales motivated staff they will want to reach the sales goals. This helps take a lot of the financial pressure and stress off you as an owner.

The only other part is ‘how do you reward the people when they reach a goal. There are many books out there with 1001 ways to reward staff. Keep it simple, reward people with the # 1 incentive. Reward them with cash. They can choose if they go for dinner, a movie or just pay off their bills. Money reward is always a good incentive…..especially if gas prices keep going up….