Sales leaders around the world will have already made plans to set more effective goals for 2017. But this year, instead of going through the motions again and later expressing frustration when things don’t go as planned, here’s a thought:
Perhaps those sales leaders — maybe you, too — should devote some time to thinking about your team’s 2017 goals in earnest, and learn how to use them to improve performance and increase engagement.
Here are six tips that could help you do that.
1. Understand the psychology behind goal-setting.
Many sales leaders begin their task of setting goals because they’ve been told to do so, either by a superior or cultural forces at large. Yet they haven’t thought seriously about what that means psychologically. That’s crazy, because in every other sales operation, leaders carefully scrutinize the psychological factors that play a role in actions and outcomes.
They know why certain phrases during a sales call have a particular effect with clients, or the reasons why personalized emails resonate with prospects; yet, with goals, they’re content to outline them with only vague reasoning.
Yet knowing why goals are important helps you set more effective milestones. Goal-setting actually changes the chemistry of our brains, and studies have shown that that activity can increase motivation and boost achievement levels by approximately 30 percent. Because the very action of creating goals has such a strong impact on brain activity, it’s crucial to take the process seriously and stick to your decisions.
2. Recognize that sales goals are like any other type of goals.
One of the most illuminating results of breaking down the sales process is the opportunity to learn that the sales function is just another form of relationship management.
This is comforting, because you likely already know how to successfully manage personal relationships (even if you don’t excel at it), and you can translate many of those same principles into…