Sales Challenges and Objectives: the SMART Method [1/2]

Setting sales objectives that are both challenging and achievable is a major key motivational factor for your sales force. However, it can also prove to be a real headache for managers! How to set them? Should they be adjusted? How to discuss them with your team? Management by objectives – theorized by American consultant and author Peter Drucker – provides some of the answers to these questions. It is an iterative method where each cycle is broken down into 3 phases: definition, monitoring, and evaluation of objectives.

The starting point of your approach must be your company’s business strategy. Your roadmap for the coming year, for example. It is important to define and formalize your organization’s business objectives. From there, you will be able to precisely determine the means to implement to achieve them, and the business objectives your teams will need to reach.
For your business objectives to be truly effective, they must be motivating for your teams: objectives that are too easy to achieve or completely unrealistic will have the opposite effect. Make sure the challenges you propose to your sales force are SMART:

Specific

First, your business objectives must be clear. You must be able to answer the following questions without ambiguity:
Who is involved, is it an individual or team objective?
Which mission is involved? – the more precise it is, the easier the objective will be to evaluate.
Under what circumstances is it achieved or not? Objectives with multiple components should be avoided, in favor of those with a single goal.

Measurable

Furthermore, your objectives must be measurable, as precisely as possible.
It is very easy to meet this measurability requirement when the objective concerned is quantitative in nature: “this month, you will need to increase your revenue by 5% compared to last month.” The metrics are obvious and easy to implement with tools like Incenteev.
When you want to implement qualitative or behavioral business objectives, the choice of metrics is less obvious. If, for example, you want your sales representatives to place more importance on customer satisfaction, you can refer to the qualitative analysis of customer feedback. Also, do not hesitate to discuss with them the evolution of results over time and the actions taken.

Sales Challenge: How to Engage Your Sales Teams in 2019?

Achievable

An objective must represent a real challenge without seeming out of reach. This is a crucial aspect if you want your business objectives to be a source of motivation for your teams. For this to work, it is important that the objective is perceived as achievable by all stakeholders – your teams as well as your hierarchy. A good balance between demandingness and realism allows your employees to envision the effort required, without becoming discouraged.

Realistic

If your teams believe their business objectives are unrealistic or excessive, they will not make efforts to achieve them.
For an objective to be realistic, the level set to achieve it must be reasonable. Your objectives will ideally be expressed in terms of progression. It must also take into account the possibility of external factors making its success more difficult (unstable political context, economic crisis, etc.).

Time-bound

That is, time-bound. The chosen duration must be consistent with the nature of the objective. Generally, the more specific the business objectives are, the shorter their duration will be, which allows for their alternation. Conversely, the more complex they are, the longer the allocated time to achieve them will be.

To learn more about the role of challenge in your business strategy and team management, download our white paper: “Sales Challenge: How to Engage Your Sales Teams in 2019?”

Other articles that might interest you:

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