Success in business and life is a continuous journey. As with any journey, it’s important to set relevant destination points or markers along the way, to help guide you to where you want to be and when you plan to arrive. Markers also let you stop and pause for a moment to reflect on the distance that you’ve travelled so far.
We do this instinctively whilst driving when using a map or satnav to help us get from A to B, usually within a certain amount of time, and with some stop off points along the way. These stop off points act as markers so we know we’re on the right path.
If we miss a marker on our journey, we know pretty quickly and accurately that we could be in for a longer ride, and the sooner we realise this the better, so we can adjust our course.
Example: As a business to business provider you’ve planned your growth based on securing 24 new customers or clients in the next 12 months – that’s 2 per month or 1 every 2 weeks. It typically takes you 4 prospect meetings with key business decision makers to secure 2 new customers – that’s a 50% conversion rate and 1 meeting per week. It typically takes you 16 phone calls or email touchpoints with prospects to secure 4 meetings – that’s a 25% conversion rate and 4 touchpoints per week. Experience has proven that you need to research 32 companies to identify 16 which you and your business would want to work with. These are your key numbers to manage your sales process or pipeline.
Being armed with this knowledge provides you with a model – this model is the start of your sales pipeline or funnel. Use our tips below to break this down into a weekly workload. This weekly workload will then inform you how much activity you need to implement on a regular basis.
Tip 1: Don’t average out your numbers.
In our example that would mean aiming for 2 new customers per month. Consider seasonal variations, annual leave commitments of key staff, months where other business commitments need to take priority such as running events or attending roadshows. You might specify 1 new customer for July, 0 new customers for August, 3 new customers for September, and 5 new customers for October.
Once you’ve defined the number of new customers you’re aiming for each month, calculate the number of meetings, phone calls and companies you need to research in that month – then break this down into a weekly target.
Using the previous driving analogy you might decide to start your journey, or reach each marker, at different times to avoid peak traffic or roadworks.
Tip 2: Plan your sales activity with your sales management system or customer relationship management (CRM) system.
Time flies in business. Put your trust in your CRM system to help you and the team manage your plans and your numbers. For example, in Microsoft Dynamics CRM you can set goals for any period of time, and often daily, weekly and monthly goals are used to specifically plan when the numbers in the above example will be met.
The real power comes with scale, as the above model can be used with 1, 2, 5, 10 or 100 people or more on your sales team. Without the right system to help you to manage this kind of volume and level of complexity you could very quickly find yourself unable to keep track of when and where you set all the goals to be achieved.
These goals are your markers, your stop off points, and your roadmap from A to B.
Tip 3: Monitor actual activity and outcomes against planned goals.
You’ve put a lot of work into making tips 1 and 2 meaningful to your business. Your CRM system should make it easy to track whether you’ve achieved your goals for the number of phone calls made or emails sent, meetings scheduled, and new customers secured during any specific time period. This enables you to regularly report, for example on a daily, weekly or monthly timeframe, whether you’re on track to meet your goals, whether you’ve met your goals, or whether you’ve exceeded them.
Goals can be reported upwards at a departmental or functional level or across the whole business, and also by individual or set of individuals reporting to a specific manager.
Once you’ve set off on your journey of growth, monitoring actual activity and outcomes against planned goals is key to knowing whether you’ve missed a marker.
Bonus tip: Don’t strive for the perfect model or system first time.
Generate the system that’s meaningful to your business and implement it, as soon as possible. Don’t strive for perfection the first time around, otherwise you’ll delay implementing your growth plans.
Design the system, implement the system, test the system, refine the system for next time. This forms part of the continual business learning process for you and your team, and is key to your business growth plans.
With 26 letters of the alphabet to go at, now you can start planning A to B for the next 12 months, then you can continue with B to C for months 12 – 24, and so on, until you reach your destination. When you reach a marker, target or goal, then stop, take a few minutes, give your team and yourself a pat on the back, and enjoy it. Then continue your journey on to your next marker of success.
Your business database or CRM system is fundamental in providing a platform to set up goals or targets, in helping you to track and manage them efficiently, and in providing the reports needed to monitor progress against goals or targets effectively, across your whole business.
If you feel we can help you to achieve sustainable growth please get in touch.
