Refine Your Sales Plan to Stay On Track

As we close in on the end of the year, sales professionals in all industries are likely pondering the same question: Am I on track? It’s important to attempt to answer that question with the best available hard numbers and the most objective real-world assessment. What happens if you find that you are off target for the year? A reassessment of your projections and pipeline can help redefine a proven list of activities and behaviors that you can do every day and every week to be successful.

Deal size and sales cycles can make goal attainment a boom or bust projection. To illustrate the point, look no further than Science Applications International Corp. closing a contract for $77 million to provide information technology managed services and solutions to agencies and departments within Orange County CA. For most businesses and sales people, a sale like that is the difference between an outstanding or a dismal year’s performance. Bringing in that deal in Q4 is likely to drastically change the key goal achievement for the salesperson responsible for the Orange County account.

Sales people should always define a sales cookbook that includes a clear list of to-do items that supports your personal income goal. Those action items should not be vague, impossible-to-measure entries but rather a concrete set of actionable, measurable behaviors that you accept personal accountability for executing, day in and day out, week in and week out.

But what if you find late in the year that you are off target because the income goal is more aggressive than you imagined or because something slipped earlier in the year? Your job is actually pretty simple. You must look at your past history closely, objectively, and purposefully enough to create a tested, validated cookbook for hitting your goal before the end of the year. If average deal size or sales cycle makes this year unrealistic, the cookbook needs to be refined for next year

Ideally, your cookbook goals should be set at the beginning of the year, so you can use the midway point to reassess where you are, what’s working, and what’s not. For a lot of salespeople, though, creating and/or following a cookbook is a “moment of truth” that only happens later on in the year, often with the incentive of hitting annual performance targets.

If Q4 is your wakeup call that key goals are not being met, do something about it! Put a plan in place with concrete steps for improving performance. Then follow the plan.