Creating sales goals isn’t always an easy process, and anyone who thinks it is is probably doing something wrong. Although businesses do their best, sometimes their targets just don’t match up with reality. To avoid these common mistakes here are some tips on creating sales goals:-

Not consulting stakeholders

A big mistake is giving the job of creating sales goals to one person and expecting them to complete it in isolation without consulting with other stakeholders. It’s important to find out how the needs of customers will impact your sales in the coming months, while also maintaining an awareness of the competition and the way their plans and marketing could impact you. Sales goal setting is a team effort, so make sure you have everyone pitch in.

Looking backwards instead of forwards

Although the sales history of your company can shed valuable insight into future trends, it’s important to be focussed on forecasting rather than reporting on what’s already happened. When it comes to sales goals, they need to be firmly grounded in where you’re going, not where you’ve already been.

Not giving employees an incentive to work harder

Your sales staff thrive on the commission you give them, the promise of earning more driving them to do a better job and earn more money for your business. However, by promising all your staff an increase in salary every year regardless of your financial situation, they may lose some of that enthusiasm. This could skew your sales targets, as your top performers may not perform quite as well. Make sure you reassess any commission or pay increases each time you set new goals and base them upon the current financial climate.

No room for flexibility

You might think that setting a goal and sticking to it is a good thing, but extreme rigidity actually limits you. You need to make sure your goals remain achievable and adapt as you realise which targets you’ll be able to meet and which you won’t. There’s no sense striving for a goal just because you set it at the beginning of the year if there are other areas that could benefit more from your time and energy.

Commissionly gives your salesforce real-time updates on performance, serving to motivate and challenge the whole team to achieve. We also provide insights and intelligence to your financial managers and leadership teams, helping you to forecast and strategically plan for the future. We work with SMBs and larger businesses around the world to help them to work smarter and achieve more.

To book your free demo or start a complimentary 14-day trial of our sales commission software simply contact our team anytime.

No matter how excellent your sales team may be, there will come a time when the dreaded “sales slump” strikes. Essentially a period where sales just don’t seem to be being made, a sales slump can really happen to anyone – but it’s not the end of the world. In fact, with the right help from you, your sales team could easily break free of their sales slump and get back to what they do best – selling! Here are our top 3 tips.

Tip #1: Revisit your sales roadmap and reset expectations

Anxiety can get the better of all of us sometimes, but salespeople can be particularly prone to it when they feel they can’t hit their targets. When this happens, and they push even harder to sell, the anxiety can paradoxically make their sales performance worse. To help this, try revisiting your annual roadmap and show your sales team that it’s okay to go through a lull in sales – especially if it’s early in the year. 

Tip #2: Give your sales team well-defined goals

One issue that can lead to a sales slump is a lack of clear goals. If your team doesn’t know exactly what they should be aiming for, it’s very difficult for them to judge how well they’re doing. This can then progress to a lack of confidence in their own skills – even if they’re excelling at their job! If you can help them to create sales goals, and perhaps do some commission tracking to keep them focused, you’re certain to see better results. 

Tip #3: Incentivise in the right way

Once you’ve got sales goals set the way you want them, you also need to consider how to keep your sales team on target. The answer to this is, of course, incentivisation – but how do you go about this? You’ll know your team better than anyone, naturally, but financial incentives in the form of commission are often the most effective solution. By tracking progress on a sales commission dashboard, your team will be able to stay focused and maybe even get some healthy competition going with their teammates! 

If you’d like to avoid the dreaded sales slump, it’s a smart idea to invest in sales performance management, which is exactly what Commissionly was created for. If you’d like to learn about our cloud-based sales commission software, simply contact our team anytime.

When it’s time to analyse sales performance goals, many business owners are often intrigued by the thought of doing away with commissions and paying employees a fixed wage. Maybe it’s a rough patch in the market or the idea that salespeople are not keen on jobs where salaries can fluctuate.

But whatever your reasoning may be, sales commissions are a critical element when it comes to devising a strong business plan. Here are three reasons why sales compensations are invaluable for corporate growth:

1. Motivate workers to make more sales

You may expect your employees to be committed to the future of the organisation. While this can be effective, you still can’t hope for workers to always perform at their peak with nothing but company goals to motivate them.

Your employees, like all humans, are certain to have their bad days. This is especially true when it comes to sales and marketing, where workers can face rejection and extreme competition throughout the day.

The stress factor can run high while they continue to make call after call while you figure out how to calculate sales targets based on their performance. A sales commission system can encourage sales representatives to focus on meeting specific sales goals, and enjoy rewards that they can grow and monitor through the business sales commission software.

2. Enhance team performance

A healthy and competitive work environment is essential for sales representatives to work towards the future together as a team. By fostering a competitive workplace that doesn’t clash with the company culture, employees are incentivised to perform their best when working towards achieving common goals.

This means that the sales goals met by each individual worker must come together to form unified targets that contribute to both departmental and overall corporate goals.

3. Analyse and recognise performance

Today’s sales departments are highly competitive environments where employees are happier for the value-based acknowledgement they receive from their peers. By recognising the sales performance of your workers, you pave the way towards better customer service, engagement and productivity. And since strong sales performance management can boost employee performance, it can actually be the difference between a successful and a losing marketing department.

Commission tracking software can play an important part in this, as it can be used to study the output of individual employees and create sales goals for the future.

When it comes to sales performance management, there’s, unfortunately, no such thing as a magic wand to create a motivated and effective sales team. So, what is the secret to crafting a supercharged sales team? Well, the answer may just surprise you in its simplicity: communication. 

Let’s look at why improving the way you communicate could give your sales team a boost:

1.) Don’t forget they’re human

When you’re managing a fast-moving sales team, it’s natural to focus on performance. In doing so, the team can become a lot like a machine, but it’s vital to remember that in reality, you’re dealing with a group of human beings.

They get tired, they get stressed, they have needs – and by addressing them with good communication, you can improve the sales team’s performance. Be sure to take the time to speak to each of your salespeople individually – and not just about their work.

2.) Ensure sales goals are clear and concise

There’s nothing more frustrating for a salesperson than an unclear or nebulous goal – and because salespeople tend to be goal-focused, this can result in stress and a reduction in performance.

When communicating with your sales team, ensure that you’ve been clear about what their goals are and what success looks like. If this means you need to work with them to create sales goals which work better for them, so be it – it’ll benefit your bottom line, after all. 

3.) Double-check they’ve got the tools they need

Another key to supercharging your sales team via communication is to make sure they have the tools and materials they need to succeed. If they’re pitching to a prospect and they don’t have the correct printed materials or resources, it could result in lost business for you – and this could have been avoided with better communication.

It’s a smart idea to set up a central location where your sales team can find all necessary collateral they need to make those sales.

If you need a little help meeting sales targets or motivating your sales team, consider a compensation software like Commissionly. With an easy-to-use design that’s accessible to all, it makes communication with your sales team an absolute breeze.

The days of using tedious Excel sheets to keep track of sales commissions are long gone. Today’s digitally savvy companies are moving forward with commission tracking software to spur their employees towards higher standards of performance and growth.

This type of software makes it possible for companies to assess each sales rep’s progress, predict future sales numbers and analyse the effect of renewals while keeping an eye on the status of their sales performance goals.

Managing employee commissions manually is a difficult and time-consuming task. Here’s what you should consider when switching to sales commission software that will work for you :

1. User-friendly

The right commission tracking software can boost not just your profits, but also your efficiency and overall workplace productivity. In order to achieve this, your chosen software needs to be simple to work with and have user-friendly features.

It must be easily operable and assist employees to produce high-quality results in a short space of time. It shouldn’t be too complex to install and must allow users to import information from other financial software already available in the workplace.

2. Functionality

This is one of the most important features to look for when purchasing sales systems. A professional commission tracking software should be able to process data from several business sources and work well together with any current software that you use.

It must be able to assist you in carrying out complicated business calculations and important analysis. The software needs to make your sales computations easier to handle and keep payments accurate. Finally, it must also be able to present all the processed information in a manner that’s easily understood by the company’s key decision makers.

3. Integrate with existing systems

The new sales commission software that you choose must be able to function well with your current systems. It must be able to access, share and transition information in a number of different formats and stay compatibly connected to other financial software systems in your workplace at all times.

4. Flexibility

Manually handling your employees’ sales performance and tracking their commission is a daunting task. This is because you need to work with several collections of financial information and spend hours of your time comparing datasets, all the while figuring out the best way to present every piece of information. But with a strong commission tracking software, you should be able to track and compare several large datasets quickly and with minimum effort.

The right software package for your business must be flexible, allowing you to choose your preferred method of processing information and adjust statistic views in ways that suit your business purposes.

The sales compensation plan is one of the most effective recruitment tools in the sales industry. When establishing your strategy, you need to ensure that it offers measurable benefits to your sales team, but you also need to ensure that it isn’t costing your business huge sums of cash every month. It needs to be fair, but appealing, and sustainable

Avoid full commission

There are some circumstances where this type of structure works but, for the most part, full commission is typically only beneficial to sales staff that can’t get other sales jobs or someone that doesn’t require a full time income. Do you really want to entrust your sales to these types of salespeople?

Reward positive behaviour

Some compensation packages fail because employees that miss targets, and don’t meet their employment requirements, continue to receive commission for their sales. This basically means that they are being rewarded for failing.

Offer incentivised rewards for behaviour that you want to see repeated. This also means targeting the goals that are important to your business – if you want to attract more long-term business, offer additional compensation for customers that sign up and stay with the business for the next 6 months.

Choose the right commission level

Commission rates can vary from 1% to 10%, as a typical rule. Use existing sales figures and bear in mind that a good rule is that your top salespeople should be earning as much from their commission as they do from their basic salary. Use this guideline to determine the amount of commission that you pay. 

Pay quickly

Paying commissions quickly will feel like an additional bonus to your salesforce. The perception of reward is greater when the reward comes hot on the heels of the success. The brain recognises that it is being rewarded for the recent action it performed, so people will be more inclined to make additional sales and reach additional goals, if you pay quickly and reliably.

Be transparent with your team

Whatever commission rate, payment terms, and other commission structure you decide on, ensure that you communicate the details with your team. You can also use your sales compensation software to provide individual reports to every one of your sales team. Regular reports enable your salespeople to identify their strong and weak points, so that they can make improvements, or continue to provide the best results for their efforts.