What processes will lead to you achieving your 2020 goals?
This is a guest blog post by Chris Peterson, Principal at Vector Firm.
Toward the end of 2006, I was planning my goals for the following year.
I realized that I did the same thing pretty much every year – I set my sales goal and then defined the process to achieve that goal.
However, during this particular year I decided to set goals for my process.
I didn’t just have a goal to increase our sales by 70% (we were in extremely high growth mode), but I also set goals for the specific steps that led to our achievement of these numbers.
Guess what?
We killed it, and I was on to something that has helped me since, in every area of my life.
It is in this spirit, that we challenge you to set 5 goals for 2020.
Even if you haven’t finalized them, you probably have an idea of the goals you plan to pursue. But, have you gone into deeper detail than just “increase sales”?
This exercise might sound a bit nebulous, so I developed a cheat sheet with 30 examples of sales process goals to stimulate your thinking.
BTW, you shouldn’t have 30 goals for next year – these are just some ideas to spark your thoughts. You should limit your goals to five or less.
1. Percentage of quotes that include a services agreement.
2. Open quoted dollars leading into next year.
3. Growth in hosted or managed services sales.
4. Nights away from home (the goal should be to keep this number low).
5. Hours of sales training.
6. Hours of product or technology training.
7. Renewal units and hours of professional development training.
8. Internal team sales meetings in which you were early.
9. Number of proactive strategic meetings with current clients.
10. Personal meeting with new prospects you’ve never met with before.
11. Speaking events in front of a relevant audience.
12. Networking events attended.
13. Leads followed-up with from networking events.
14. Leads provided to networking partners.
15. How many new clients.
16. Focus on prospecting – Number of prospecting blocks of time in which you focused only on prospecting. (This should be at least a weekly block of two to four hours.)
17. Number of contacts in your database.
18. Increase number of Twitter followers or LinkedIn connections.
19. Number of tweets or posts.
20. How many quotes generated.
21. Number of strategic meetings with manufacturer partners involved.
22. Quantify prospects that attend open houses or other company events.
23. Number of different clients entertained (not just lunch – dinner, golf, ballgames, shows, etc.)
24. A&E / Consultant personal meetings.
25. A&E lunch & learn presentations.
26. Top five prospects progress such as introductory meeting, quote, etc. (could be top 10).
27. Top 50 current client attrition rate (could be less than top 50).
28. Transition all small accounts to someone else.
29. Project management hours (goal should be to do less).
30. Dollar amount of quotes generated.
So, what are your 2020 goals?
We’d love to hear from you in the comments below.
This article was originally published a few years ago, and has been adapted for today. It has been republished with the express permission of Vector Firm.
Read the original article here – Salespeople Set the Wrong Goals Every Year. What Goals Should You Be Pursuing in 2020?
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