What To Do If Your Sales Team Fails To Achieve The Sales Quota; Have your sales reps failed to reach the sales quota?
It is rather disappointing but you should not fail to analyze the exact reason for failure.
It will help you from future failures and losses.
Moreover, you can also bring back the lost confidence of your team.
Was Your Sales Quota Realistic?
First of all, you need to find out whether or not your sales quota achievable.
It is time to make a thorough analysis.
Figure out the capabilities of your team members by analyzing their past performances.
Now, find out whether or not they were assigned attainable sub-targets.
Note that your sales target greatly determines whether your team could achieve it or not.
It depends on many factors like your sales force capability, your team’s sales strategies, etc.
If sales reps are assigned unrealistic goals, they will struggle throughout the duration. Moreover, they will feel a lack of motivation.
As a result, they might not achieve whatever they could. Also, they could miss their focus and concentration.
It can enhance the stress level of your sales team.
So, an unattainable sales quota can be responsible for the failure.
The solution is straightforward!
First of all, it is a must to figure out the past performance of your sales force.
Also, you need to monitor individual salesperson’s track records.
Find out performance records on different markets or geographical regions. Then, start comparing the differences in the performance level.
Do not forget to examine the latest market trends. The demand for a specific product keeps on changing. So, achieving the same revenue target every time may not be possible.
So, design your sales targets complying with the current market demands.
When you have clear insights into the capability of your team, you can design better sales goals.
Were Your Sales Strategies Correct?
Incorrect sales strategies can lead to failure in sales quotas.
Maybe the convincing tactics were not effective enough.
Maybe there were some gaps in the conversations with prospects.
Maybe the alignment was not clear between the prospects’ pain-points and your products.
Had your team interacted with target prospects? Did they prioritize prospects based on lead scoring?
Were your pitches perfect?
You need to find out the answers to all these questions.
Thus, you can reach a conclusion on whether there were any loopholes in the sales strategies.
It will help you to design your future strategies with the ace.
Were Your Marketing And Sales Correctly Aligned?
The marketing department and sales department are two critical segments of a business.
However, a correct alignment between these two departments is also crucial.
Let us take an example:
A marketing team has found out new leads for a product. Nevertheless, the sales team had failed to interact with those leads properly.
Or, the marketing team targeted the wrong sets of prospects. As a result, salespeople could not fulfill their targets.
In both cases, proper interaction was missing between the marketing and sales teams.
The solution is simple.
The sales manager or leader needs to train marketing and sales executives. The executives must learn how to align their tasks to reach sales quotas.
Marketing teams and sales teams are two individual departments in a company. However, as per new data, these two departments must be well-connected for great success.
Organizations, which connect marketing and sales teams, achieve more than 36% customer retention. Also, they can successfully achieve more than 38% win rates.
What happens whenever a company’s marketing team finds out new leads?
According to a study, more than 24% of organizations took over 1 day to interact with new leads.
On the other hand, 23% of companies never responded to new leads.
As per another study, responding to new leads within 1 hour increases the chance of qualifying. However, waiting for 1 day cannot yield that much efficient result.
Hence, it is critical to make alignment between marketing and sales teams. As a result, your sales reps can interact with new leads in less time.
Did You Have A Well-Crafted Sales Process?
The worth-noting point is, 40% of organizations do not possess a well-crafted sales process.
And it is rather a matter of concern!
Moreover, businesses with proper sales strategies achieve more than 50% of the win rate.
Now, it is high time to figure out whether or not there were loopholes in your sales process.
Have your sales reps been failing to achieve their sales targets for the last couple of times?
Then, you must analyze their sales strategies.
Otherwise, the same thing can keep on repeating!
Moreover, inspecting the strategies will also refuel the motivation of your sales force.
Thus, you can find out which of the factors are holding them back from succeeding.
Besides, you can also alleviate the duration that your reps devote in non-sales activities.
Now, what can be the solution to these loopholes?
The solution is quite simple & straightforward!
You need to design a sales playbook for your sales team.
Now, you must find out the answers to the following questions and add them to the playbook.
Which factors can attract more prospects to your brand?
What is the length of your average sales cycle?
What are the minimum points of contact (that is crucial) to close a deal?
What is the breakthrough aspect that can convert maximum prospects into clients?
How to find out the answers to the above questions?
First of all, you need to start looking over your past sales. Thus, you can find out the keys to fulfill your future sales quotas.
So, it will help you to guide and support your sales team with the ace.
Furthermore, your CRM (Customer relationship management) must comply with your company’s sales process.
As a result, your sales reps can get to know how to interact with each prospect. It will reduce your sales funnel leakage as a result.
It is not the end!
You will also need to decide about the activities that each of your team members will perform.
Besides, it is also critical to figure out the strengths as well as weaknesses of your reps.
Again, you need to find out the answers to the following questions:
Who are excellent at cold calling?
Who is better at cold emailing?
Who can better follow-up with prospects?
Who can better convince prospects to get converted into customers?
Which of your reps can better warm-up new leads?
Who can better work as account managers?
Find out the answers and you can figure out who can better play which roles.
As a result, you can design a better sales process for your future sales goals.
Nowadays, sales teams of a company collaborate to close big deals. Besides, maximum enterprise-sized organizations appoint 5 to 11 salespeople for each sale.
Assign each of your sales reps different roles, as per their capabilities.
Thus, your team can perform with the ace.
Also, you can expect to reach future sales targets with this process.
Was Your Salespeople Training Sufficient?
As per a study, over half of all companies arrange inefficient training for their sales force.
So, it is essential for you as well to find out the efficacy of your coaching or training.
Most sales managers devote approx 15 hours of one-on-one interactions with the salespeople.
Nevertheless, just 1/4th of this duration is dedicated for salesforce training.
Do you know efficient coaching can greatly help you in growing your company’s revenue?
Organizations, which offer effective coaching to their salespeople, achieve 16.7% more growth in annual revenue?
Now, what can be the solution?
As a start, you need to find out the capabilities of your sales reps.
You already know, you must figure out the strengths & weaknesses of your salespeople.
Just find out the performance of your sales force throughout the last sales quota process. Figure out their activities in each step.
Do not only focus on the final results. It is crucial to analyze each of their strategies.
Are your team members experiencing any trouble? Why are you losing prospects? Why lots of your prospects are not getting converted?
Now, it is time to analyze the reviews of your customers about your company. Are there any negative reviews on your sales team?
To dig more details, you can reach out to your customers with a survey.
Request them to fill it out so that you can serve them better in the future.
Thus, you can know about their opinions and improve your sales strategies accordingly.
Do not forget to check reviews posted on different review websites.
Now, start figuring out the sales activities of your sales force. Analyze which loopholes have made your customers post negative reviews or low ratings?
So, now, you can design a best-in-class one-on-one training session for each of your reps.
Do not make it like a performance review of your last sales quota.
Rather, make it a lighthearted, friendly conversation. Give scopes to your team members to come up with their problems.
A group conversation can lead to solutions to many (if not all) problems.
Make your salespeople believe that you are there to help and support them in hard times.
It will inspire them to resume working with great work spirit.
Do not forget to check reviews posted on different review websites.
Now, start figuring out the sales activities of your sales force. Analyze which loopholes have made your customers post negative reviews or low ratings?
Besides, they can also boost their performance. It will also help them to achieve their sales quotas.
Do Your Salespeople Have Sufficient Current Industry Knowledge?
Do you know 40% of all sales executives cannot realize prospects pain points?
Salespeople, who hold a great understanding of the pain points, have 28% more chance to achieve their sales targets.
Find out whether your sales team is experiencing any issues.
If yes, then lacking core industry knowledge could be the reason.
Moreover, insufficient knowledge of target customers can also be responsible for this. If it is the case, then your team will get troubles in moving leads through your sales funnel.
Are you curious about the solution?
You just need to coach your sales reps to comprehend the target prospects.
If you detect insufficient knowledge of your sales team, you must arrange training sessions.
It might be a regular session or a special session to boost your sales force.
The main goal here is to make your reps ready to better interact with the target prospects.
Encourage your team members to stay updated with the latest industry knowledge. The world is changing and so are the preferences of people. Therefore, it is crucial to stay up-to-date always.
So, before designing a sales quota, find out the answers to the following questions:
What are the pain points of your target prospects in most cases?
What can your products do to solve their problems?
What issues they experience in their daily lives?
Let your sales force comprehend the value of these aspects. As a result, they can close more and more deals.
