April is the time when all the companies make their quarter-pole analysis, summaries, and match against predictions for the current year. Though it heavily depends on the industry, this period provides a valuable insight into the performance of a firm. This is why it’s critical to track the sales trends throughout the year.
As usual, a company lays down a selling plan in early January. It sets the quotas for each quarter based on the data for the same period of the previous year(s). For example, your sales team closed $10 million in Q1, 2017, and now projects an $11 million forecast in Q1, 2018. This creative process of creating a leading indicator from a lagging indicator is thankfully getting more sophisticated with the promise of better forecasting tools than simply using previous year’s results.
It’s also worth noting that recent research into goal setting suggests that the science of getting targets right is its own reward because they’ve already hit the number.
What is your organizational plan? Tracking towards the number, or did it manage to outperform? Maybe something went wrong, and the team failed to attain their quota. In any case, you’ll need to analyze and adjust your sales plan for the year. Let’s take a closer look at these sales trends.
This sales trend looks like the worst-case scenario, and the most apparent reason to analyze it. Several things are needed for company when it failed to hit the quota:
In the sales team work, you’ll need to analyze:
We’ll discuss the possible reasons for a sales team’s poor results, and the ways to overcome them below.
While it looks like the best of the possible sales trends, it also requires you to think harder. Success here doesn’t assure you the same results at other periods of the year. However, you’ll definitely want to repeat it! Here is what you need to do.
Study your sales team’s best practices. Make sure they will become the part of the daily activities of your employees. Learn how to retain the necessary sales results below.
Most companies would conduct analysis only if they see one of the sales trends as mentioned above. However, they will stay satisfied with the attainment of their plan. While intuitively, this tactic seems right, in reality, it isn’t successful, and here’s why.
As we said before, the plan is based on the results of the previous years. A company on-target will be expected to do the same by the end of the current period. The sales team met the expectation, but do you think that they have succeeded?
We believe that consistency and stability aren’t always assurances of prosperity, and by no means do they signify change. If your company achieves results within percentage-based, yearly benchmarks, then it’s likely time to upgrade your stretch goals.
Like a living being, any business needs to grow. And to do it, it should leave its comfort zone. It means that a company needs changes in how its sales process works. Here are a couple of things that evolve in a successful organization:
We are pretty sure that when a company opts to change one can succeed and attain the desired results. However, in the beginning, the top management needs to change their mindset towards pro-activity and development.
No matter, which of the sales trends your company is having right now, there are three fundamental pillars. First, it’s the strategy implemented in your annual plan. Second, there’s environment, which is beyond your control, but influences the course. Third, there’s the process that is fulfilled by a sales team in accordance to the strategy.
Let’s take a closer look at the process. As we just said, it complies with the plan. It might seem that the latter is in charge of the sales and the results; however, there are reasonable extents to which your strategy governs your process.
First, you can’t put down every workflow in your plan. Similarly, there’s no guarantee that your employees will fulfill every step as top management sees it. We all know that processes differ from what they should be in a perfect world. Finally, if your sales don’t work as you foresaw, you need to revisit and adjust your strategy.
If we break any process down, we’ll have the operations, the executors and the resources. These are tasks, sales team, tools and methods. Furthermore, any process has a “fourth dimension,” and that consists of timing and various stages. We call it sales pipeline. Finally, a process operates with and transforms particular objects. In sales, it’s the conversion of leads.
When you have the results from your first quarter, you can analyze the following components:
Consider outsourcing your lead generation to an outbound prospecting company.
It will reduce the costs and increase the quality of this process. Today, like never before, an SDR should be a professional. However, the trend to reduce their tenure, and the quick promotion in 14 months makes it almost impossible to find skillful people in this position.
At sales outsourcing companies, SDRs hold their position for several years and become professionals. They also tend to specialize in 2-3 industries to make their work even more efficient. In addition to this, some firms provide the services of sales intelligence. They will enrich your existing lists of contacts and add to the new ones.
If your managers can’t handle more qualified opportunities brought by an increased number of SDRs, they need training.
The comprehensive analysis of these factors will help you to see what is going on in your sales process. You will get an insight into the results of the quarter-pole and understand better the sales trends of your company.
It will be beneficial for companies that underperformed and those that overperform. Similarly, it will help those organizations that want to grow and evolve.