Objectives

Set your objectives and targets to first develop your sales strategy. First start with your business objectives and break these down to individual sales targets. If you are a solo entrepreneur, setting your sales objectives is straight forward, as these are a function of your company objectives. If you have a sales team, you would have to break down these company objectives even further. For example, the Sales Manager would have her sales objectives, The sales teams would then have their individual objectives. Objectives of course don’t need to be financial. They could be to do with policies, such as answer customer queries within a certain time.

Forecasting

In larger businesses, there may be top-down and bottom-up forecasting. For instance, the sales force will forecast future sales, based on their knowledge of the market. Higher management would then reconcile this against the forecasts. There is usually an end of year tug of war until they agree a forecast for the following year.

Personal Targets

Once your have done the forecast, you can then set personal targets for the sales team individuals or yourself if you are a solo entrepreneur. These targets could be stretch targets, with compensation and commissions based on achievement. Targets could be end of year sales, monthly sales. Here is an example of a clear personal objective:

To achieve an overall Net Sales target of £726,464, which is to include New Business growth of £20,000 (i.e. accounts or new product sales into existing customers) by the end of Q4. This to be monitored quarterly against figures published in the Monthly Report. A gap action plan should be produced if sales fall >5% below plan. Another example of an objective is Administration: Ensure all Territory and Customer Admin (e.g. Visit Reports, Special Pricing Forms, Price Increases, Expenses, Mileage, Stock Requisition and Monthly Reports) is completed On Target In Full (OTIF) to standards set by Regional Sales Manager and communicated to all relevant internal and external contacts on-going.