Have You Met Your Sales Goals for the Year???

It’s the End of the Year and You Have Not Met Your Sales Goals… WHY???

It’s November and you are nowhere near your sales goals for the year.  You started the year on a positive note. You created a business plan that you were going to follow that would get you to your targeted number. It is now November and you have no chance to get there.

Herb Agin former Chairman of TCN Worldwide in a sales training meeting once said, “If you are a Salesman and are not making at least a six figure income in sales go get a real job”.  As a commissionable salesperson whether you are selling widgets or commercial real estate I agree with Herb. You are choosing not to collect a regular paycheck for a bigger potential payday.

So why did you not make your goals this year?  My first guess is that you really did not follow your plan at all. You meant to but you didn’t. You may have intended to make 50 cold calls a day but you didn’t. You may have decided to create a mailing campaign to a targeted group of potential clients and then follow-up with them and you didn’t. You may have decided to join a series of networking events and you didn’t. You may have decided to develop and support a web site campaign and you didn’t. 

Good salespeople have bad years on occasion great salespeople never do. Great salesmen are constantly checking where they are in their plan. They are constantly checking and comparing their production to earlier years and finding a way to get to their goals and they do.

So it’s November what should you do now?  Lets look at a baseball team that is out of contention what do they do?  In September the San Francisco Giants were out of contention so instead of the old regulars you started to see the new rookies. They played different younger players to see what they had to work with for next year.

As a salesperson you need to do the same. Go back to the drawing board, revisit your plan and see what worked and didn’t work. If it worked, plan to do the same thing again next year. If something didn’t work or if you never executed that part of the plan decide to either implement it or get rid of it and concentrate on something else.

Remember sales, as a business is pretty simple to understand. The more people you are in contact with on a daily basis the more business you will achieve. You can spend a fortune attending business conferences and buy all the sales books you want but that’s the bottom line if you want to succeed.