How To Reach Your Sales Goals and Make Commissions

At the end of each year, those in sales management will pull out their spreadsheets and work out the coming year’s goals and targets. If you are lucky, they will have left well enough alone with an unnecessarily cumbersome commission plan.

At some point, you will be given goals and targets and your commission structure. You’ve been through this exercise before, so you may give it a quick glance, bitch about how management doesn’t understand, and then file it away both literally and figuratively.  Managements plans and goals are rarely a source of motivation.

A Better Way

But there is another way. A better way. That way is to write your own targets, goals and commission plans.

What if instead of accepting management’s goals and targets, you set your own personal goals and targets?

What if instead of simply trying to meet the minimums that have been established, you instead wrote your own personal plan to meet your own goals?

What if instead of calculating your commissions based on their plan, you calculated your commissions based on your plan and targets?

How much more motivating is it to sit down and determine your own path, your own plan, and your own goals? The answer is that it is much more motivating. It’s also more fun and more professional.

The Voice That Only You Can Hear

Motivating you to reach your targets and goals is not your sales manager’s job. The real motivating voice for each of us is the voice that only we can hear. Planning to reach your goals and targets begins with the conversation you have with that voice.

It is critical that you have that conversation around your own personal goals, targets and compensation . . . it is far more important than the conversation you have with your sales manager.

Here are some questions to get you started with your own personal goals, targets and commissions. Let these questions guide your conversation and motivate you.

Five Questions: How To Reach Your Goals

Here are the five questions you need to ask during your personal goals and commissions planning:

1. Regardless of the goals and targets that were set out for me, what do I really want to accomplish with my sales year?

Too many people have the same sales year over and over again.

Even though you may work for a company, your goals and your ambitions in life are yours and yours alone. This includes your life in sales.

What you accomplish with your sales year can extend far beyond what your sales managements has in mind. What clients do you want to win? What areas of your performance do you want to improve? A year from now, how will you judge whether or not you had a successful year?

2. Regardless of the commission structure I have been presented with, how much am I going to make in commission?

Your organization may control the structure by which commissions are calculated, but you have total control over how you work within those calculations. Study your commission structure to make sure you understand what levers your company is trying to pull. Try to find out what results will lead to the greatest commissions. Use what you have learned in conjunction with your personal sales goals to write your own commission targets.

Don’t rely on your sales manager to do this for you. As a professional salesperson, it is your responsibility to know and understand the rules of the game. Then play the game within those rules.

3. In order to reach these goals, who would I have to be?

The Master Key to Sales Effectiveness is self discipline. Self discipline allows you to be the person that makes the better choices about what to do with their time.

Much of your effectiveness is determined by the choices you make. Do you choose to browse the Internet instead of prospecting? Do you choose to leave your email open all day, responding to every trivial email in real time? Do people describe you as someone with great water cooler knowledge like the latest sports scores or the latest results on American Idol? Or do they describe you as a disciplined, focused salesperson with results worth envying?

4. Based on my effectiveness now, what activity would I need to take on a daily and weekly basis to ensure that I can meet my personal goals and targets?

Based on your current results, how much time do you need to dedicate to the basic sales activities to reach your personal goals and commission plans? How much time do you need to prospect? How many prospects do you need in your pipeline? What does your average sale need to be?

Once you have answered these questions (and the ones you will ask yourself as you work through your plan), you can break these down into the daily and weekly activities you will need to take to remain on target. Will it be perfect? Absolutely not. Will it serve as a guide so that you can make the necessary adjustments? Absolutely.

5. Whose help will I need to enlist

Even though this is your plan, there are a people whose help you can enlist. Do you need your sales manager’s help with resources? Do you need some of your team members help with subject matter expertise to influence a prospect? Do you need help from those around you in minimizing distractions? Ask for help from those who can help you reach your goals and targets.

Conclusion

In the end our successes and our failures have more to with what we believe and the actions we take than any external factor. Regardless of the goals and targets set for you, your personal and professional development are primarily your responsibility. Don’t simply accept the goals and targets that are given to you.

Where you end up at the end of the year is your responsibility. Chart your own course and make your destination your own!

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