What is a sales target?
A sales target is the goal achieved by the company within a specific time frame. Every business sets goals in order to achieve its desired outcomes. Set sales targets for business can be useful in several ways: internal benchmarking, team motivation and efficiency. Sales is a lifeblood of any business, and as a result many sales targets overlap into other departments such as marketing, product development and customer service. Having a good set of sales targets play a critical role in business success.
What are the benefits of sales targets?
Sales targets ensure a healthy business lifecycle. Initially, having sales goals helps to create a sense of accountability and responsibility amongst your sales team. Psychologically, when employees have a goal top of mind, they are more likely to work harder. As a result, your overall team performance will benefit.
Naturally, revenues are affected by the sales team. Enormously, motivated and engaged team will bring more sales and closed deals, which will grow your business.
Along with that, setting sales targets can identify a company's weaknesses. By having set sales targets, companies are able to identify areas where they may be falling short and can develop strategies to improve their performance.
How to set sales targets?
If you're struggling to set sales targets, then try to make your sales targets SMART (Specific; Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time-bound). By following S.M.A.R.T guidelines, you enable your sales targets to be clear, measurable, and achievable. It’s important to pay attention to each S.M.A.R.T objective, and be specific when selecting your targets. For example, include percentages or numbers showing how much you want to increase your profitability or market share. Another essential factor while setting sales targets is making goals that are achievable. It is understandable that businesses take small milestones, especially for new businesses so don’t jump over too much. If your team has sales goals that are not realistically achievable, it will only make your team demotivated and frustrated.
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Defining your sales targets
Sales targets need to be defined responsibly. Correctly set sales targets are more likely to result in a favorable outcome for your business. Primarily, sales targets should align with the broader business strategy, supporting the company's mission and vision. Your company should analyze the market and make future predictions. This will ensure that sales targets will be realistic and achievable.
Remember to also involve your team in the sales target-setting process. Employees will be able to provide invaluable, first-hand insight into the newest market and sales trends, which will increase ownership and trust. You also need to evaluate your team's performance and allocate targets differently to your team. Finally, remember that sales targets do not have to be rigid. After setting your sales targets, keep monitoring and adjust if necessary.
Still having doubts about what sales targets you should set for 2024? Below we have 10 ideas for sales targets that can serve as inspiration:
- Increase your annual revenue by 10%.
- Reduce customer churn rate by 3%.
- Increase the number of leads by 25%
- Increase customer lifetime value by 10%
- Increase customer retention by 15%
- Increase conversion rate by 10%
- Increase number of referrals by 25%
- Increase made sales calls by 10%
- Increase upsell and cross sell by 10%
- Increase number of customers by 20%
How to reach your sales targets?
Once you have set your sales goals, it’s important to have an effective strategy for how you can reach them. First, your company’s success begins with an effective team. Invest some time in training and coaching, to develop employees’ skills and competencies.
Furthermore, develop a sales process where you outline all the needed steps to reach your sales targets.
Monitor sales performance. It is vital for your company to track everyday performance by setting different sales KPIs. Tracking set KPIs will identify areas for improvement and help in developing sales strategies! As a leader, you need to stay a few steps ahead and make changes if necessary. With Plecto you can make sure you stay ahead of the game by creating custom KPIs and tracking real-time progress toward sales targets.
Finally, implement modern innovations into your organization. CRM systems save a significant amount of time, but it’s important to keep your CRM up to date if you want to fully benefit out of this. Plecto integrates many popular CRM systems like Salesforce, Podio and Pipedrive. It will be beneficial for you to move all relevant data from the CRM system to Plecto Dashboards! It will allow you to track real-time changes and see how far your sales targets are by adding relevant KPI to your dashboard. You can get so many benefits from one platform!
How to motivate your sales team?
Motivation is key in reaching your sales targets. A leader needs to unlock the full potential of employees and continuously find new ways to motivate your team and make sure that they achieve the best possible results. Here are some strategies for how to motivate your sales team:
Setting higher goals
Show trust to your employees and set goals a bit higher than what they are used to.. It will increase their self-confidence and motivation, which will help them to achieve their sales targets.
Having a workplace transparency
Also, a workplace transparency increases efficiency. Make some team building activities, so each team member will be valued and it will be a great motivation! For example you can do outdoor activities, game night or a trip. This will make you united and increase trust between each other. .
Setting a sales contest
Set individual goals for each employee and consider some rewards, which can make your employee satisfied. One way to spark your sales reps’ motivation is to hold regular sales contests. Using Plecto to run state of the art sales contests, where you can track the progress of the top performers in real-time! With Plecto sales contests you can customize by sales target, type and theme. Unleash your creativity and boost your employees by adding sales contests with Plecto!
Take these tips for sales targets for 2025 and combine them with Plecto!
This article provided you with useful sales target examples and strategies for achieving them. Tracking your sales targets will be easier with Plecto for numerous reasons:
- Clarity: Plecto takes complex data and digests it into something that is simple and easy to understand.
- Real-time results: monitor how close you are to reaching sales goals and never miss a beat
- Increased team effectiveness: tracking sales targets on real-time dashboards aligns the sales team together toward the same goal.
Plecto provides 150+ integrations, fully customizable KPIs, and real-time data visualization. Integrating Plecto with your CRM will bring additional features that will empower the full platform’s potential! Sales contests and gamification features will boost morale in the office and motivate your employees to meet all sales targets faster!
Sign up for a 14-day trial and see how Plecto will transform your employees and unlock your team’s full potential!
