Business Challenges and Objectives: Keep your SMART Approach [2/2]

Setting business objectives both challenging and achievable for your sales representatives is one of the keys to motivating your teams. But it can also prove to be a real headache from a manager’s perspective. This article is the second part of a series dedicated to management by objectives.

In the first part of this article, we aimed to create sales objectives that generate engagement. In this second part, we will see how to implement these objectives daily. How to make them both effective management tools and motivators for your teams.

Give Meaning to your Sales Objectives

For the objectives you set for your employees to be motivating, it is essential that they understand the strategy from which they stem. If you have followed the advice in the first part of this article, your sales objectives are defined according to the following logic:

1. Define your business objectives in the medium and long term.
2. Establish a sales strategy to achieve them.
3. From this, deduce your operational sales objectives.

It is essential that your teams understand the link between their daily actions and the organization’s strategy. This way, they will feel more involved in the company’s success. For example, do not hesitate to organize a quarterly meeting during which you will present this longer-term strategy. Invite other stakeholders (other departments, top management members…) to make the vision clearer and more comprehensive for your sales representatives.

Your Sales Objectives Facilitate Dialogue

Furthermore, internal negotiation is an essential component to ensure the long-term relevance of your sales objectives. Allow room for consultation. This can be done through regular check-ins with each of your employees. You can jointly review their progress. Integrate the specificities of their clients into the objectives, pay more attention to the segmentation of the client portfolio assigned to them. Also, make it an opportunity for reciprocal feedback: from the manager on their employee’s work, and from the employee on their assignments.

This way, you can adjust your management daily. Rather than negotiating the objective’s amount, first focus the discussion on the means to achieve it. The idea is to ensure that your sales objectives are as ambitious and realistic as possible. Be clear in advance about the degrees of adaptability you can grant.

Involve your Employees in the (Re)Definition of Their Sales Objectives

Finally, involve your teams in defining and evolving their objectives. You can facilitate a dedicated session once a year for in-depth feedback on the past year’s objectives. This way, you can gain perspective on what worked well and what was a source of motivation. Review what didn’t work as well and why. Beyond an assessment, the goal is to bring forth solutions to implement to do better the following year.

This is an opportunity for your employees to express themselves: to share their ideas, to develop their vision of their role within the organization. These meetings are actually quite difficult to conduct. The relationships between your sales representatives and your clients involve many specific cases. They are often a source of distraction when teams are brought together. Good preparation beforehand will be key to the success of this meeting.

To learn more about the role of challenge in your sales strategy and team management, feel free to download our white paper: “Sales Challenge: How to Create a Motivating Challenge in 2019“.

Other articles that might interest you

• Sales Challenges and Objectives: the SMART Method [1/2]
• Sales Challenge: Aligning Sales Strategy and Levers of Action