Goal to Fail in 2019 ?

I saw a post on my linkedin feed by Dave Matson CEO of Sandler Sales Training about a Salesforce.com World Wide Survey on the Top 5 Sales Trends:

1.  As Sales Mandates Change, Teams Are Falling Short of Rising Customer Expectations

2. A Data-Driven Sales Playbook Is Emerging

3. The Impact of Artificial Intelligence Is Taking Shape

4. Virtual Selling Has Hit a Tipping Point

5. Top Sales Teams Break From the “Silo Mentality”

The big eye opener for me was revealed in Trend # 1 in that 57% of sales people do not expect to hit their numbers.   Yes that is right some 57% of sales people don’t feel that they will hit their numbers in the coming year ….. Ouch.

https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2018/05/sales-future-trends-research.html

Not sure who said it first it wasn’t me: ” If you Think You Can or think you can’t your right.” Success begins in our head. Failing to plan is planning to fail. As Chris Jennings of Sandler Training (www.lrn2sell.com) told me “We can’t control whether the prospect will buy or not. What we can control is our behavior.”  The Average Sales Person in the USA only spends 45 min of the day actually selling i.e. Paytime. Chris said Sales is more like hockey than basketball.  In hockey we cheer every shot on goal, in sales it is the same. We make our calls – do our Pay Time, we are taking a shot on our goals. We can plan and control our prospecting – selling behavior. Chris says one huge factor is to get 4 hours of pay time every day.

A goal without a plan is a wish. Don’t get addicted to Hopium. Hoping somehow things will work out. First: What is your income goal for the year. Second how many appointments – sales calls does it take to generate the Gross sales needed to hit your income goal. Third how many cold calls, networking events, trade shows, internet leads etc does it take to get the number of appointments needed. Set your goals accordingly.

Now the hard part Track Your Goals, do it every day, review every week, and at the end of the month, then the year will fall into place track it too. Some folks use CRM Software like Salesforce. They set up a dashboard that tracks their key metrics. Others use a Whiteboard, Spreadsheets, Log Book, etc. The end result becomes predictable and controllable. You will see what is working and what is not working fairly quickly and adjust. Most importantly Plan to Succeed and you are right.