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Welcome to my brand new sales tips blog. I will be updating this on a regular, if not daily, basis. I’ve been in sales, sales management and sales training for over 20 years and one thing that I know is that busy sales professionals don’t have a lot of time to read sales books, view sales CDs or even read long sales blogs. I’m going to keep these posts “short and sweet”…and meaningful to you.

Keeping Score. Your boss is always talking about “sales goals.” These goals are normally broken down by revenue amount, new business attainment, product category, SIC code, etc. This is true whether you’re brand new to sales or the VP of Sales for a Fortune 500 company. Coming up with these goals usually takes about 30 seconds, which is a testament to how valuable they are. The most important goal, however, for the sales professional and sales manager to focus on is the one that actually means something to the person tasked with the goal: compensation. If a company has a sales compensation program that is not broken (many are), then sales personnel will be rewarded for the selling behaviors that the company desires. If the sales employees are making the compensation they need to make, then the company should be reaching its goals as well. Again, this is based on a compensation program that is actually rewarding sales staff for selling the revenue amounts, products and types of customers that the company desires. So…why not work it backwards? How much money do you want/need to make? Set your compensation goal and see what has to be done to reach that goal. If you’re a sales manager, then do it for your entire group. This way you will be working toward a goal you care about.

Hint to sales management: your sales staff does not care about any goals other than this one despite what they may say in order to be politically correct. It’s time to get real with them.

Oh, and by the way, if you work it backwards and you find that Superman could not possibly sell enough to reach your goal then I don’t need to tell you that it’s time to do some soul searching.

To be continued tomorrow.

Tags: commission

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