Managing your Missed Sales Quota
The question of managing your sales quota is very stressful.
From the day you set your sales quota to the day you reach half of it, the stress starts pertaining to the sales manager and, of course, the entire sales management team.
Well, getting tensed or stressed over the situation won't help you. You need to work over the problem by taking concrete steps and changing the process in the right way.
Now the question is,
How effectively will the process work that can boost up your quota achievement in a considerable time?
The answer to this is establishing accurate practices and tactics that will align with the sales pipeline process. It will help you keep a check on the activities and allow you to reduce overheads and eliminate errors that might affect the Quota.
In this article, we will talk about managing the missed sales quotas effectively through a strategic approach along with the following:
• What is a Sales Quota?
• Reasons for not hitting the Sales Quota
• Six Ways to Manage Missed Sales Quota
What is a Sales Quota?
Sales Quota refers to a target or minimum sales level that a sales entity, team, or individual aims to achieve.
In other words, it refers to setting a number of sales or a specific revenue amount to be generated by the sales management team or an agency for the company's overall growth.
These sales quotas enable an organization to incentivize the work and improve the conversion rates specified for a specific period. The particular period can be on a weekly, fortnightly, monthly, quarterly or yearly basis.
The sales quotas are measured in terms of
- Revenue generated
- Units sold
- Number of customers
- Activities like product demonstrations
Overall, the entire sales cycle is dependent upon how well you can achieve the quotas.
Reasons for not hitting the Sales Quota
If you cannot hit the sales quota, the reason for it might be a set of repeatable events with either a higher or lower error rate.
This is the reason why you are not able to hit your target outcome.
If there is something wrong with the inputs, then it might affect the outcome in the long run.
Following are the five reasons due to which you are not able to hit your sales target:
- You don't follow a sales process
- Lack of alignment of activities
- Lack of trained salespeople
- You don't have organizational support
- You focus on long term goals without considering short term goals
1. You don't follow a sales process
A sales process is just like a business plan but explicitly designed for the sales team. A good sales process helps you channel the work procedures and help you get the desired results.
If you are following it, then you need to think it over.
2. Lack of alignment of activities
If a salesperson gets too many orders from different departments, it is possible that the salesperson might be confused and won't deliver to that level as promised.
So to carry out the work promptly, the entire team needs to work together and coordinate with each other towards winning the sale.
3. Lack of trained salespeople
If a salesperson doesn't have the required skills to perform their best, it is most likely that the organization will lose on a lot of offers.
So, the organization and the salesperson need to get efficient training with a particular focus to command the nuances of sales.
4. You don't have organizational support
The selling function is not just about making sales. It is more about what are the other factors that are built around the selling process.
Your sales perform on factors like accounting, delivery production, support customer service, and compensation plans.
If you have support from these departments, then only your sales can outshine.
Otherwise, it will remain mere numbers.
5. You focus on long term goals without considering short term goals
The organization needs to set both short-term and long-term goals simultaneously. The long-term goals can only be achieved by making the right short-term actionable plans.
It will help your business by diluting the energy and resources of the company towards the achievement of short goals that will ultimately lead to the success of long-term objectives.
"Your business can be conquered by every action, every rule, and every policy you make to support the sale."
Six Ways to Manage Missed Sales Quota
Missing out on sales quota can result in many problems like conflicts, confusion, and disengagement among the sales team.
But since there is always a way out for problems, there is also a way to manage your missed sales quota.
These are effective methods that can help the salesperson motivate and encourage their mindset, even if they have missed the target. It will help to plan out the situation and make the targets fair and attainable.
Following are the six tips that a sales team should follow in managing their missed quotas and analyzing the future goals with the right strategy:
- Ensure Accuracy in sales forecasting
- Effective sales training of representatives
- Authorities to alter sales quotas
- Better handling of disputes & conflicts
- Set realistic sales quota
- Practice Frequent checkups
1. Ensure Accuracy in sales forecasting
Back in the olden times, sales quota setting was manual that took up a lot of time for both the sales manager and the administrators. Due to a lack of data and resources, the department couldn't predict the accurate sales quota.
So to ensure Accuracy in sales forecasting, it is essential to consider visibility into metrics and insights that can help the managers set the Quota quickly.
It will help them to set actual targets depending upon the overall status of the quota planning process.
2. Effective sales training of representatives
Sales are not just limited to ultimate conversion.
It depends upon a lot of crucial factors of information that the salesperson collects before ending that conversion.
A salesperson should be trained enough to understand the prospect's objections & concerns, factors dependent on completing the sales, the time frame, sales cycle, and overall buying decision process. A salesperson should also know about the thoughts on competitors of friends and the total budget.
All of these can be achieved only through an effective and practical training process.
If the salesperson is not qualified to understand the overall sales pipeline, they are likely that they won't convert deals.
Hence, proper training is a priority for the sales representatives, and the organization must conduct the same.
3. Authorities to alter sales quotas
A sales manager is the one responsible for fixing the sales quotas. There is a false notion in the sales process that what is set and you can't change.
But what if an unforeseen situation arrives?
So the sales managers need to hold the authority to alter the sales quotas after they are set. With the help of quota relief, an organization can result in more remarkable achievements.
For example, if there is a natural disaster in your city, it is likely that your organization won't make that set target. Here, by using quota relief, you can alter your target and make it flexible.
4. Better handling of disputes & conflicts
In a complex sales organization, different employees perform different sets of functions under the role. It is most likely that disputes and conflicts may arise with the respective sales representative.
So it is essential to listen and handle those individual issues by mentoring and scaling up their mindset. Similarly, if there are conflicts between two or more sales representatives, you need to take the situation diligently by listening to all the parties and then coming to a conclusion.
Otherwise, the disputes will keep rising and penetrating the work environment that can push the goals back.
Being able to manage disputes and conflicts is an art and an essential aspect of sales management.
5. Set realistic sales quota
Setting the sales quota randomly without checking up with reality is the worst mistake a sales organization can make.
For example, your organization has just started, and they have already set a target to complete a hundred sales in 5 days.
This is a bit unrealistic because:
- Firstly the organization is not known to everyone
- Second, setting up a target of hundred sales in a matter of few days is very difficult
But the organization can make the sales quotas realistic by setting up lower targets, say 30 for five days, and then level up based on the performances.
Setting a quota is not just limited to just developing a random number. There should be some logic to support it.
This means you should also consider the critical optics that includes opportunities in the marketplace, representatives you have, positioning process, and threats that may arise.
6. Practice Frequent checkups
Simply setting the sales quota won't take you long until and unless you analyze the progress. A sales organization needs to ensure frequent checkups and examine the sales data.
If you are converting a low percentage of Quota or the numbers lagging behind the forecast, it is essential to consider them red flags. If you find problems in the sales audits, you should be ready with your action plan.
If you won't follow frequent checkups, it is possible for a useless increase in the cost of sales, and you may end up lagging way behind.
It may sound challenging to manage the sales quotas effectively. Hopefully, these six tips mentioned above helped you think about different ways to consider and fine-tune your sales management.
The help of improving these critical activities like effective forecasting, quota alteration, quota relief, and empowering management can ensure the overall success of your strategic approach in managing the missed sales quota.
If these tips are considered at first, it is sure that your sales team will be ready to perform and outshine with their best efforts.
How Deskera Can Assist You?
Whether you are a sales manager or running your own business, there are tons of duties and responsibilities that you have to fulfill. Using the Deskera CRM system, you can manage your contacts, leads and sales deals. You can use the CRM system to manage all customer data and manage your leads, deals and your sales quota.
Doing so will help you to save the time taken in transferring customer data between the different systems. Having a good CRM system will help you manage your financial and sales reports and be prepared to kick-off your meetings.
Deskera can also assist you with real-time updates about your business like cash flow status, customer satisfaction, inventory management, sales, purchases, purchase orders, customer tickets, customer satisfaction, managing leads, revenues, profit, and loss statements, and balance sheets.
Moreover, it would also help in integrating sales methodology across different platforms onto one system so that you have a consolidated list for email campaigns, leads management, and sales pipeline to mention a few.
It will also help you to sync between your orders, payments, taxes, refunds, product variants, sending out invoices and reminders, facilitating invoice management, and even undertaking follow-ups and advertisement campaigns.
Such a consolidated platform will help you to improve your sales through building effective sales compensation plans and also facilitate faster and well-informed decision-making. It will help you in strengthening your opportunities and being braced for the threats.
Deskera books and Deskera CRM will also be able to ensure the highest customer satisfaction and thereby an increase in net revenues and net profits.
Key Takeaways
In this article, we understood the concept of sales quota, the reasons affecting sales Quota, and still effectively managing to achieve the goals and objectives.
It is essential to highlight that whether you hit your milestone or not, your sales team will be the one who will play a direct role in keeping your business moving.
So it is crucial to keep them aligned and motivated, monitor the sales activity at the ground level, and align them with sales quotas.
Let's take a look at the key takeaways of the article:
- Sales quota refers to setting a target based on a number of sales or revenue amount which is to be generated by the sales team for the growth of the company.
- The sales quota enables the organization to incentivize the work and improve the conversion rates.
- Missing out on sales quota is when the organization fails to complete the target set for a particular period.
- A set of repeatable events contributes towards the reasons for missing out on the sales quota.
- There are five significant reasons why the organization is not in a position to hit the sales target.
- The major reasons include
✓ Lack of sales process
✓ Lack of alignment of activities
✓ Lack of trained salespeople
✓ Lack of organizational support
✓ Focus on long term goals rather than short term
- There are effective methods that a salesperson should follow in managing their missed sales quota
- There are overall six tips that can sum up the situation well and make the target fair and unattainable
✓Ensuring Accuracy in sales forecasting
✓Effective sales training of representatives
✓Authorities to alter sales quotas
✓Better handling of disputes & conflicts
✓Setting realistic sales quota
✓Practicing Frequent checkups
- With these six tips, you will be in a position to manage the missed sales quota well.
- If these tips are considered at first, it will help the sales team be ready with the performance and help them outshine in the organization