How does your sales funnel look today? What’s healthy? What’s unhealthy? How can you make sure your team stays on track to hit quota this year?
Every sales leader has these questions, and most probably lose sleep a few nights a week just thinking about them. So, what are the answers?
There’s one: The answer is that there is no magical solution for getting sales teams to quota. But, if you help keep your team focused on the right behaviors at key times throughout the funnel you will have a better chance of reaching your goals.
Where to start
Let’s start with the standard sales funnel. The balance here has to be just right. Too many organizations focus too much on bottom-funnel activities that happen late in the sales process, like deals closing. Clearly these activities are important, but what about those at the top of the funnel? You need to consider those, too.
Take a look back at your CRM reports and reference successful months. Within those time frames, look at the average number of:
- Calls made
- Meetings set
- Meetings that actually took place
- Opportunities created
- Time it took for deals to progress (or to close, depending on the length of your sales cycle)
Also understand which opportunity stages were crucial during that sales cycle. In other words, which stage(s) really made a difference in terms of setting up those deals to close?
If you can identify these areas, you will have a solid baseline for activity.
What’s next?
You know what kinds of metrics your team shows during a strong month. Now you should focus on these key areas at crucial times, driving engagement around them. One way to do this includes building competitions around them, one or two behaviors at a time.
Just make those competitions short. Annual, quarterly and even monthly sales contests tend to disengage busy salespeople. Our research shows that the greatest impact comes from short-burst contests that last 8.6 days or less. Also, make sure to use those short contests as a source of increased recognition.
If you follow these general rules of keeping competitions short, focused and full of recognition, you will no doubt have less sleepless nights and hit quota much easier! Then you’ll look like this guy:
Need proof? Find out what happened when Kelly Services did this. (Hint: It ends with $5.8M in additional revenue.)
