It’s good to set sales goals. They help to motivate us as OOH salespeople to achieve more, and they establish expectations and define success. But in order for them to be effective, the right goals have to be the focus. When we decide to track our strategy in order to measure our sales effectiveness, we often choose the wrong things to measure success.
There is a sales rule that we teach our OOH Sales Mastery clients, “Stop focusing on the wrong end of the problem”.
Here are some example of focusing on the wrong end of the problem:
Tracking how many proposals get submitted This is like a doctor tracking how many times they diagnose a patient without running any tests or diagnostics. Who would do that? A doctor’s goal is to heal, not to hand out diagnoses – and yours should be the same. The goal is to win proposals, so you should only be sending them to people who are likely to accept them. You should only be creating them for qualified prospects who will make good partners.
Tracking sales numbers, but only comparing it to last month, the last quarter or last year This is similar to tracking how much time you spent skiing last year while ignoring things like snowfall and weather. We need to track how much of our sales come from new clients compared to existing clients. We need to track the types of clients we get and track who is buying what. Having that knowledge tells us how effective our sales plan is.
Tracking prospecting and sales activities but not their outcomes If I make 200 calls in a week, but none progress past a first call, am I doing a good job? If I really don’t know what is working /not working to generate a prospect’s desire to schedule a more in-depth exploratory conversation, how will I “fine Tune” my calls to make them more effective?
Ignoring margins or diminishing the need to uphold them to grow sales In other words, the whole focus of my validation of success in sales is increased revenue without regard for rate integrity. If I have to sell at a lower price than all my competitors to meet my sales goals, how good am I? And am I really helping the company grow?
Allowing too much time to pass before tweaking my plan This is like getting on the football field, losing the first half 52-0, and then deciding to change the game plan. You knew long before halftime that something must be changed. Why wait until the locker room talk to change it?
An OOH leader and each sales team member need to have their priorities straight. Tracking metrics and setting goals are both noble pursuits, but they’re useless if you concentrate on meaningless things. Make sure you don’t waste time and effort on poorly chosen metrics/measures, instead track the things that will really lead to success.
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