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Salespeople often fear setting sales targets for themselves; they are afraid of not completing tasks and dread the term "sales plan." Even during execution, they lack proper planning and methods, blindly pursuing goals. Analysis reveals that salespeople frequently make four mistakes that prevent goal achievement:

  1. Scattered goals. Salespeople do not know the potential performance from past, current, and future customers.
  2. Unclear roles and responsibilities. Salespeople are unclear about their roles and duties.
  3. Lack of system. During execution, they prioritize incorrectly, leading to chaotic work and poor management.
  4. Strong start, weak finish. They start with high energy and willingness, but as execution deepens, their momentum wanes.

To address these issues and achieve goals, first, from an overall perspective, the company's strategy must be communicated. Only when salespeople understand the strategic goals can they align them with sales targets and then integrate them into departmental and individual goals. In this process, the strategic goal is the "cause." Salespeople can use it to plan and set personal goals, and employees feel they are an important part of the company's development, enhancing their sense of belonging and integration. Next, based on the current situation and actual conditions, break down the goal into smaller, easily achievable sub-goals, then tackle them one by one to approach the final big goal.

Goals are not simply calculated with arithmetic; they must be standardized. Therefore, salespeople's goal setting must follow these five principles:

  1. Goals must be clear and quantified with specific numbers.
  2. Goals must be predictable and anticipate current customer conditions, future new customer development, and industry competition analysis.
  3. Goals must be achievable and integrated into quarterly, monthly, weekly, and daily plans.
  4. Goals must be practical, with a key focus direction each quarter and work around that direction.
  5. Goals must have a time frame, with time limits based on urgency for each specific plan.

During goal decomposition, the most difficult part is how to reasonably break down the overall goal into smaller goals by quarter, month, week, and day. In the process, have salespeople write down the necessary conditions to achieve the overall goal, draw out sub-goals, perform the first-level decomposition, and then write down the difficulties and conditions that need to be overcome to achieve each sub-goal, preparing thoroughly. Continue this process until all goal decompositions are written. These difficulties and conditions include: current customer characteristics, how many customers are needed for support, current customer volume, customer repurchase rate, cooperation opportunities, product portfolio planning, and even customer habits. Once these can be accurately judged, then break down the goals into each month and each product.

Based on the decomposed sub-goals, salespeople should think, "What should we do each quarter, month, week, and day to support the achievement of each goal?" Through this thinking, salespeople can develop action plans. In the process of developing action plans: first, have salespeople concretely write down what they should do to achieve the goals; second, list the benefits of achieving the goals and the penalties for not achieving them—only with both rewards and penalties can salespeople show motivation; third, list the obstacles to overcome during goal achievement and the knowledge, skills, and industry information needed; fourth, identify the support and cooperation needed from the team and other departments; finally, list the specific times for achieving goals at each stage. Through these five aspects of overall thinking, salespeople can precisely grasp what work needs to be done at each stage to achieve goals, and finally develop a complete action plan.

Salespeople's action plans can be divided into long-term plans and short-term work plans based on time frame. Long-term plans can be divided by quarter and month, helping salespeople avoid losing confidence due to short-term setbacks during the charge. Long-term plans often suffer from being too grand, empty, and unrealistic; therefore, they must be practical and based on actual conditions, not changed frequently, or salespeople cannot follow them. When making long-term work plans, pay attention to coordinating various departments and key details.

With monthly goals in place, the next step is short-term plans, i.e., weekly work. Each week includes rest days, and due to human laziness, there may be gaps on rest days. We need to let employees understand what work we need to accomplish in a week, how it is progressing, and what reasons prevent timely goal completion. Summarize and analyze the successful experiences of exceeding goals, identify shortcomings through self-check, make targeted improvements, and fully identify resources that need assistance from various departments.

During goal execution and action, salespeople need to grasp several important directions:

  1. People: customer targets.
  2. Things: what tasks must be completed to satisfy customers.
  3. Time: plan time nodes, start and end dates, and what we actually did.
  4. Place: development and visit locations.
  5. Objects: what items are needed for sales assistance.
  6. Cost: what cost support is needed during sales.

After breaking down the overall goal into detailed sub-goals and developing action plans, the next step is to use management systems to control and check the execution process, such as salespeople's sense of responsibility, customer service awareness, work efficiency, teamwork, work skills, and the quality of work plans. Through such control and inspection systems, combined with thorough execution of company goals and appropriate resource support, salespeople can confidently handle assigned annual goals and even unexpected situations. When annual goals are thoroughly achieved each year, receiving new annual goals will no longer cause sighs.

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