3 Tips For Going Above & Beyond Your June Sales Quota
The countdown to my wedding on November 24th is officially here. I’ve got 6 months to make this thing happen and hope that it goes off without a hitch. Just thinking about the venue, flowers, caterer, band, photographer, invitations, etc. is overwhelming, and it’s hard not to feel nervous that it won’t all come together in the end. The overwhelming feeling I have right now is a lot like the feeling that inside sales reps have as they enter the first week of a new month. New goals and quotas have been assigned to sales reps for June and some might be feeling overwhelmed with the tasks at hand, worried they won’t reach their goals by June 30th. Just like I need to step back, organize, and take the appropriate steps to ensure a fabulous wedding, sales teams need to take a step back, plan for the month, and take the right steps throughout the whole month in order to achieve their quota. If executed properly, there will be no need to work all hours of the night at month’s end to try to reach your numbers.
Below are three critical areas to focus on every day so you reach your goal way ahead of schedule this month - no slacking! As long as you focus on these fundamentals of inside sales, there’s no reason to have the panicked feeling on Friday, June 29th at 5pm if not at your goal.
1. Focus on Quality Activities. If you are making 100+ calls per day, that is excellent. Just make sure the dials you are making are of quality. Ask yourself: Are you calling the operator if you don’t get your prospect live to make sure they are the best person to speak with? Are you utilizing databases like Linkedin, Netprospex, Jigsaw, etc. to call into additional contacts within the organization? If you are calling into a company and hanging up before gathering a piece of quality information, there’s no way you’ll hit your quota, so remember to make smart dials when calling into every organization.
2. Put the Time in. If you’re a rep that tends to slack at the beginning of the month, and picks up the pace at the middle of the month, I suggest you work on making your behavior more consistent. This seems obvious, but you’d be surprised at how many inside sales reps wait until the 15th of each month to truly focus and start uncovering opportunities. A really good tip that I can give is to put the time in and take advantage of prime calling hours. I think the hours between 7:30am-9:30am, 11:30am-1:30pm, and 4:30pm-6:30pm are truly the best times to reach prospects live. Think about it, executives are at meetings pretty much all day. The times they are at their desks are when they get in early in the morning to prepare for those meetings, at lunch time when they actually have a few minutes to gather their thoughts as they eat, and at the end of the day when the office starts to quiet down a bit, and they have the bandwidth to answer some emails before they head out for the day. If you aren’t uncovering the amount of opportunities you need, try putting the extra effort in. It will not only help your personal goal, but your managers will notice your efforts. Believe me, people that come in early, stay late, and the ones that are talking loud to prospects ALL day are always the top performers.
3. Try Something New. For instance, send out an email campaign or change your call plan methodology up. If you didn’t make your quota last month, or if you just made it and you want to improve for June, try something new. Your number isn’t going to magically increase dramatically unless you make changes to the way you operate. Talk to your manager and let them know you want to experiment with sending more emails, or automating the whole emailing process all together, so you don’t have to send any emails at all and can focus on dialing.
Just like I don’t want to be piecing together wedding favors at 12am the night before my wedding, you as a sales rep don’t want to be working all hours of the night come June 29th at 5pm. Remember, if you plan ahead and consistently perform throughout the month, there’s no way you won’t hit your goals in June. It’s the start of a new month – focus, work hard, and make it happen!