Not everyone is going to hit their sales goal every month. You need to be able to accept the occasional off-month. You do need to establish how often not hitting a quota is acceptable and the corresponding repercussions.
I’ve heard a lot of excuses over the years for people not hitting a quota. There are very few that are legitimate as there are always obstacles that need to be overcome in order to be successful. Let’s take a look at a few of the more common excuses and determine a path to overcome them.
Time Out Of The Office
The number one excuse that I’ve heard for not hitting quota is when there is planned (vacation) or unplanned (illness) time out of the office. For a significant illness or larger vacation, like a two week honeymoon, it can be very tough to put in the effort needed to hit your goal. But in less extreme cases, you should plan accordingly to be sure you stay on track. Sales typically requires a little more flexibility and willingness to put in a couple of extra hours here and there.
Planned vacations are a little easier to handle as you can put in some effort before you leave as well as when you return. You can also avoid scheduling calls during your time off. For a sickness, you only have your recovery time once you are back in the office. I would suggest for simpler colds that you still stay engaged with the office while you are out. Keeping up with your emails and being available for questions from your teammates on particular clients can keep everything afloat until you return.
Not Doing the Work
Sales Process
One of the biggest mistakes I see with struggling salespeople is that they do not have a sales process that they follow. Simply answering the phone and emailing out quotes will typically not provide the expected results to help someone achieve hitting their sales goals. You need a systematic approach that determines:
Prospecting
How often you are following up with a lead before and after you provide a quote
The timing of those follow ups
The method of the follow up (text, email, phone call, etc.)
The approach of each call (how you are going to build rapport and trust and show expertise as well as how you gather information and ask for the business)
Appropriate documentation, entry, and other system procedures (pro tip: having a sales system, such as HubSpot will help streamline your entire sales process!)
Either an onboarding process for new clients or a process to set up Quotes Not Sold for the next renewal
Following the Sales Process
A sales process is vital to the success of any good salesperson. However, a sales process that isn’t followed is as useless as a screen door on a submarine. Once the sales process has been established, it needs to be consistently followed.
The results also need to be consistently monitored so that you are able to identify where in the sales process things are breaking down. This allows for adjustments that will improve the final results.
No Self Insight or Improvement
Self Insight
To be brutally upfront, the sales people that I meet that consistently don’t hit their goals are usually not honest with themselves in one or many aspects of their sales approach. This ranges from deluding themselves on how strong their pipeline may be to blaming the leads/prospects on only caring about price. In order to improve, we have to look at what we can change to improve the situation, not place blame elsewhere. We can only control what we can control; the rest should be let go. If it really isn’t the fault of the salesperson, they will never achieve their goal and maybe should seek an alternative position. Why would someone want to work at a job with an impossible goal?
Once we start holding ourselves accountable, we can change the approach. We can focus on what we can do to improve and start to increase our chances of success.
Self Improvement
Once the need to improved is accepted, most sales people then become open to sales training. I’m constantly amazed by the idea that struggling sales people are ten times more opposed to sales training than successful ones. It appears to be a function of confidence. Confidence is extremely helpful to a salesperson; when you are successful, you have enough confidence to accept the help offered by the training.
There are definitely exceptions, but focusing on eliminating excuses for not hitting the sales goal is the first step in being able to hold yourself accountable which allows you to start to look at the ways to increase your sales and improve your odds of hitting the goals. Happy selling!
