Using Your Annual Planning Process to Ensure Great Sales Results in 2018

Jason Jordan, Partner, Vantage Point Performance

One of the biggest deficiencies that we see in many sales forces is a lack of alignment among corporate goals, sales objectives, and sales force behaviors. The three are frequently allowed to operate independently with the tacit (and often faulty) assumption that they are all in alignment and working toward a common end. At no time of the year is this independence more pronounced than in fiscal Q4, when senior executives, sales leaders, and salespeople are busy with their own respective tasks.

In Search of Organizational Alignment

In the final few months of the year, different teams within organizations are all busy trying to manage a flurry of separate tasks that must be completed before the year’s end. As the new year approaches, there will undoubtedly be fresh plans, budgets, and targets for everyone. But will these pieces be integrated and aligned? Will the top, middle, and bottom layers of the organization really perform as one?

Engineering Success

One of the keys to aligning an organization from top to bottom is to align the metrics that each level uses to measure success. If you follow Vantage Point’s research, you know we contend that there are three distinct levels of metrics that can (and should) be used to measure and manage a sales force.

First, there are business results such as revenue, market share, or customer satisfaction that are viewed at the company level and used to report the overall health of the organization. Second, there are sales objectives — metrics such as customer retention, new product sales, deal win rates, and other benchmarks that constitute the sales force’s success at achieving specific goals. And finally, there are sales activities. These are measures such as the volume of sales calls made, number of customers assigned to each seller, percentage of salespeople using CRM tools, or the amount of training provided to the sales force. These are the activities sales managers and salespeople actually do to fulfill business objectives and attain business results. Establishing formal linkages among business results, sales objectives, and sales activities is the key to ensuring focused execution in the field that will lead directly to the achievement of the company’s overall goals. Align these metrics, and your company’s sales force will be on the path to success.

To read the complete article, Using Your Annual Planning Process to Ensure Great Sales Results in 2018, visit Quotable.com.