Why you are missing your sales targets

This is going to be one of the most important podcasts I've ever done, and it's because it's such a critical factor for anyone that's in sales or business in general.

And it's all about hitting targets or numbers that you want to make happen.

And I'm going to share with you the reasons why it's not happening and what you need to do to solve it.

The reality is this, there are a number of reasons which are critical, which stop you from achieving targets.

So if you don't do these things, or if you're not doing.

If you're not taking note of these elements and are thinking, why am I struggling?

This is the podcast for you.

Let's dive right into what's causing this to happen.

And by the way, I've been there in that situation, both as a salesperson, but also as a business owner where you've set a goal, you've set a plan, and you're wondering, why are we not making it happen?

And why are we not achieving the targets that we want?

And if you're in a sales role, especially maybe you're a salesperson listening to this and you've been given a target, then I know that the pressure on you from other people is significant.

People are asking questions as to when you're going to deliver results.

And I'm going to share a podcast soon around how to handle sales pressure in a different way.

But sales targets are what most of us in a business and sales situation live and breathe by every day.

So we have to be able to work out how to resolve this.

So point number one is your target is unrealistic.

I believe very often that targets are created with a finger in the air.

Oh, I think we'll make this happen, rather than it coming from a source of, you know, clarity and insight.

And I say this as someone who I'm recording this in in early January, and I've created some targets for my business for this year, and I've created them based upon what I think should happen, and I've created these numbers.

And I look back at my numbers from last year, and I look back and I thought, wow, to achieve those numbers is probably growth around 30, 40% from where we were to where we are now.

And I've gone and said to myself, well, why is that realistic?

Why is that feasible?

How are other people doing it?

So the reality, firstly, is your target realistic?

And the best way to check this is, you know, if I look at other sales training companies and other sales mentoring companies, how Quickly, are they growing?

Are they growing at 30% a year?

Are they, you know, growing at the same pace?

In which case that's a good way for me to do it, or did I grow 30% from the previous year?

So look at the past in terms of statistics as to your and your industry to see whether the targets that you're being given are unrealistic.

And if you're being given that target by someone else above you, then ask the question, love, you know, happy to talk through the target.

Please can you show me the data or insight that makes this target a realistic one?

Now, we often hear on, on, on, on shows like Dragon's Den or Shark Tank where people come in with unrealistic goals.

They're going to go from 100k overnight and everyone's like, how are you going to do that?

So got to make sure your target is realistic.

Point number two is this, is your service or the product that you sell focused or targeted enough?

I know when I've gone back and looked through our business and the things that we want to improve on and where we've not achieved some of the growth and the elements that we wanted to, it's because we didn't, we weren't specific enough or we weren't targeted enough.

And one of them, there's a simple phrase I use a lot which is, you know, solve a specific problem for a specific audience.

And the reality is in most cases, businesses and salespeople don't do that well enough.

Their audience is too varied because they say, oh, well, I can appeal and I can sell to lots of people.

I've been through this, I've had this mistake.

It's one of my biggest, you know, mistakes I've made in the past, where my first business, we targeted small businesses.

There were 5 million of them in the UK.

That's our market market.

Whereas if we'd have said we're going to focus on this group of 100,000 people, 100,000 companies, maybe accountants or solicitors or whatever else we would have in a be able to spot solve a specific issue for them that they have right now, we would have achieved better results.

So my point number two is be focused enough.

If you're not hitting your numbers, look at what you're doing now and say, is what we're doing you Could I describe that specific group of people and go, right, I know how to find those HR directors of manufacturing companies that, you know, export overseas with over 500 people.

Is that specific enough?

I don't know.

You need to make sure that your, your audience is targeted and well and specific enough.

Obviously, if it's too specific, then you may not have enough people to achieve the goals that you want.

But invariably we need our business to have a really focused approach and when we're not, we end up becoming everything to everyone, not something to someone, and missing targets.

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Now back to the podcast and point number three.

Built around point number two is if you don't understand your market well enough.

So people say to me about targets and, you know, what we've got to achieve and what we've got to do and it's like, well, but they don't understand the problems and the issues for their market well enough.

They don't know what that group are going through.

I was on the phone to one of my team this morning and we were talking, we work with, you know, I'd be happy.

Our target market are CEOs of companies who have maybe doing 5 to 50 million pounds in revenue, who've got a sales team that sell high value services, that want to grow and achieve business exit value.

And we were talking about this this morning because that's my target audience.

And I was saying, actually, will the people that we're talking to, these CEOs, do this and do that?

And we were going, I'm not sure.

And we said, right, the best way to do that is to ask the people that we know that are in that space, our current customers.

So know your market well enough, not just know the market and the dynamics of the market, but know the people that operate within that market, know the type of person they are, know the type of role they've got or whether they'll do certain things or whether they won't do certain things.

That makes such a big difference when it comes to, to, to getting, you know, when you put in things in place, new and your offerings to know whether someone will buy it.

And a lot of the time it's because people think there's a problem in a market, whereas the marketplace has already found an alternative solution or doesn't think it's a big enough of an issue.

So know your market well enough.

Point number four is they don't have a sales clear.

Clear sales strategy and plan.

And this is one of the things I see more often than not in companies that they have a goal or a target they want to hit and they have no idea how to get there.

So it's like saying, I'm going to get in my car, I want to get to Scotland, but I have no idea which road I'm going to go on.

And the reality is if I did that, I'd end up driving around into certain roads and not having a clue where I'm going and get nowhere.

And if you don't have a clear sales strategy, stroke sales plan, then you are not going to get to where you want to get to.

And that is something I see on a regular basis.

That there is just no, there's a number, but there's no clear map or pathway or blueprint of how to get to that point.

And if you don't have that, it's very hard to be able to know whether you're even on track and whether you're doing what you need to do, what's required to get to hit the number, let alone hit the number in the first place.

Next point is no consistent sales approach or methodology.

So what tends to happen is that they've got a sales target and then it's a bit of a free for all, for everyone in their team to go and make it happen.

And they then have three people going off and getting results in a certain way.

But that means that those three people compared to the other four people are doing things differently, which means overall all the team isn't getting the consistent approach and results.

And your sales methodology or structure or approach should be based upon what you know has worked.

If you're the founder of the business, you know what's worked in the past.

And it's about being able to adjust and adapt your, you know, you create a, for want of a better phrase, a blueprint, an outline that says, okay, this is what worked for me.

I'm going to then go and document that.

And that's what we do in my business at the sales growth Academy and in James White.

We, we build sales blueprints, we build sales plans and sales blueprints for companies so that they can exactly what's going to happen.

And we base those, those plans and those blueprints on what's been successful right now.

How are you getting results?

What target markets are you working with?

What messages are you sending and using to your existing customers that's making that customer work with you or that prospect work with you?

And how can we then replicate those across different team members?

But that's, that's the critical thing.

You have that consistent method so that all, you know, all of the team are utilizing the same approach.

They don't have to be robotic in how they do it, but they've all got a consistency and way of doing it and a consistent methodology to measure leads going through the pipeline.

And again, you see in a lot of cases, certain leads and certain time is spent chasing opportunities because there's not been a qualification procedure or there's not been a thought process given to how they're going to do something in a certain way.

So no consistent methodology.

What are the other two of the critical things I see all of the time?

And mainly this is a reason again, when I've looked in the mirror, when I've failed in sales targets in the past, is not prospecting enough or prospecting in the wrong way.

And it tends to be a bit of both, but it certainly tends to be not prospecting at all.

If I had a pound for amount of salespeople that want leads to be given to them as if they're, you know, Caesar being fed grapes on a chaise long.

Whereas the reality is, you know, in business it doesn't always happen that way.

We have to prospect, we have to be out there, be visible to try and find people in our, that can buy our services or offer offering.

And invariably, you know, people expect the business is going to come to them and it doesn't.

And we don't put time into it, we don't make do it because it's, it's not the best part of selling, picking up the phone or reaching out to someone that's never heard from us and saying, do you want to work with us?

But we've got to be in a position where we do that because if we don't prospect enough, we can't build, we can't sow enough seeds to then reap later on.

You know, see yourself as a farmer when it comes to sales and prospecting.

When, if you're missing, you know, farmer doesn't look at his crops in the end of the, the end at the end of the summer and then say, oh, right, I've only got three, three, three fields of carrots.

You know, if he needed a hundred, well, if he didn't plant the seeds in the other 97, he's not going to get those.

And so the reality is we've got to plant the seeds early enough and then sow and nurture those crops in order to then reap the harvest later on.

So the reality is if you're missing targets, I bet you most of the time when I talk to most talk to sales teams, I was with a company in the last couple of weeks before Christmas, you know, giving them a new method to prospect because they weren't prospecting enough and they weren't doing it in the right way.

And that meant that their approach wasn't working, wasn't resonating, they weren't generating leads and it was all falling apart from there.

So not, not, not prospecting off or prospecting in the wrong way is another big reason why, you know, targets are missed.

Another key reason why targets are missed is selling to the wrong person in the company or the family that you're working with.

But let's say the company, because that's where I traditionally focus my time and effort.

So people tend to, you know, have conversations.

And again, this linked into the previous point around prospecting enough.

It's very easy to have a conversation with the, the person in the organization that doesn't have a role, you know, doesn't have a decision making, you know, job, or the person that's only just involved in doing something.

And we always tend to find it easier to talk to those people because we feel like they're easier to talk to and it's a nicer conversation.

But yet those are the people that are generally not making decisions.

So here's a little tip for you that I encourage people to always focus on.

Do you want to hit targets?

And that's to sell to those that create budgets, not those that have budgets.

I'll repeat that again.

Sell to those who create budgets, not those that have budgets.

Sell to the people that can make decisions.

And of course you need to think about how to sell to them in a different way because they don't operate in a detailed way.

They don't want to know the ins and outs of everything.

They want to know how it's going to affect big issues in their business or their company or what they do.

But the reality is sell to people at the right level.

If you always sell to people that are at the, you know, I think there's three levels of decision making in an organization.

So decision level three are what I would call implementers or doers.

Level two are influencers and then level one are decision makers.

If you're always selling into into doers, then they've got to sell upwards and sometimes they might want something, but the person above the decision maker doesn't have funds or it's not on their priority list.

You're better off to understand the decision maker and then sell to them rather than necessarily selling to those at a low level.

You need to get those people involved.

But ultimately, when it comes to saying yes and hitting deals and making things happen, sell to decision makers.

The other key thing you've got to take into account as well is your deal size, size of deal size.

If you're missing targets, is it because the size of opportunity that you're working on is too small?

Again, the company I'm working with at the moment I spoke to you for Christmas, they've been struggling to hit targets.

And the reason they've been doing that is because the deal sizes for what they need to get to, they need, you know, 60 deals per year to come across the line to hit the number.

And on average they do 20 to 30.

So it's just totally unrealistic for them to get double the amount of deals through the, through the company in order to hit the target.

So the question is, how can they increase the value of the size of the deal?

And that might take a little bit more work and a bit more time, but make that deal size higher so that you're able to not need as many to get the target done.

And you know, as I always say to businesses that I work with, if you've got a target of a million pound of growth of new revenue, of course easiest way to do that is one person, one company spending a million pounds.

And that may not be their right approach because it would put lots of eggs in one basket.

But it's still easier to then get 5 paying 200 than it is to get 10 paying 100 or even 20 paying 50.

So look at ways in which you can take your service offering to an audience where they can, they can create a higher deal size.

So you have to do less work.

It takes more, takes more effort to get those deals done and it takes more time.

But the deal size too low can be a reason why you're not hitting the number.

Couple other things just to finish off before we go on this podcast episode.

Lack of collaboration between sales and marketing is Another key reason I see a lot where marketing.

Blame sales for not providing the right information.

Sales bring.

Blame marketing for not bringing things together.

And there's this, hopefully there's this complete breakdown between, between the two.

You know, ultimately you're a football team.

You need to work together as a unit to, you know, to, to win.

And you've got to work together to make sure that marketing, you know, can do their job, to know who they're going to target and create a message that resonates with our audience and for sales to then follow up and, and engage and not try and do too much, bring prospects through at the right time.

So build a relationship between sales and marketing.

Don't see them as your adversaries.

They're allies.

Work together to come together for the same point.

They can help you, they can share market research and market insights, but don't fight each other.

That's going to be a key way in which you're going to miss targets if you're not careful.

You've got a couple of final ones to finish off with.

You've got to make sure you qualify leads effectively.

So much time is spent chasing opportunities.

Our biggest asset that we have is our time.

And people spend time chasing leads that are never going to go anywhere.

They were never the right fit.

They never had enough pain or drive to go make something happen.

And we spend a huge amount of time literally, you know, working on opportunities that don't go anywhere.

And lack of good time management and being unproductive is a real killer for hitting sales targets Again.

I was with an organization last year when I was chatting to them about what they were trying to do, and actually they were chasing after people that were never going to go anywhere.

And that meant that they weren't able to do the productivity levels.

They needed to engage and communicate and have conversations, the right amount of conversations to open up opportunities.

So really have a little look at who you're a good fit for and be open to be able to qualify out at the early stages.

If someone's not a good fit or you don't think they can help you or that you can work together, then be able to take a step back is just as important.

But make sure that you take action.

One of the other reasons why, you know, as I said before, about not taking action on prospecting, but having that accountability to do what you said you would do is a reason why, you know, targets don't happen and don't get achieved is because people talk a good game but then go and don't go and deliver it.

So, you know, if we've got a plan, we've got to go and deliver those plans.

There's parts of those plans that are going to be difficult and bits that we don't want to do.

But we've got to be motivated.

Whether it's the commission check or just keeping our jobs or just achieving success or proving someone wrong, let's have that motivation to achieve things.

Things and the take ownership and accountability.

If you're going to say you're going to do something, let's do it and make it happen.

So, you know, add these elements to the final point around building your knowledge and your skills.

Whether it's around your product, service or area or your sales skills itself.

If you haven't got the right skills in place, if you don't know what it is you're doing, when, then you're going to struggle to know the right thing to do at the right time.

So if it's a product or service, you know, knowledge you need, then go and get that from colleagues or from other people that can help you or learn or spend some time reading or manuals on your website that can help you learn your, your service offering and what it does.

And if it's sales skills, skills you don't know how to convert or close or bring people through in the process, then, then reach out to a sales trainer.

You want to reach out to me, great.

If you want to reach out to anyone, build your skills to work out what you need to do to turn more prospects into opportunities and it's going to help you grow and get to where you want to.

So there's a, there's a whistle stop tour on why you're missing sales targets.

If you're working for a company at the moment and you're missing targets, the reality is if you keep missing targets, we all know that the end result of this is potentially that you're not going to stay in a job sales as a result business.

So we want to avoid that.

If you're a business owner, a founder and you're not hitting the numbers you want to, then reach out to me.

Let's talk, let's have a conversation around.

We do a sales, sales plan review where we and me and my team will happily sit down and go through your sales plan and what you're doing at the moment as an initial audit to be able to see how we can see what's going wrong or what's not going the way you want it to and spot things that maybe You've not spotted it yourself.

This, you know, Solomon's paradox is always the key thing here when we're in business and we think we're great at doing something, but we miss something obvious.

That's what we can bring to the, to the discussion and can help you spot, you know, a reason that can, can maybe, you know, once tweet can get you on track.

But the reality is we've got to take the right action to be able to achieve the numbers we want to.

They're not going to happen on their own.

And if you continue to miss targets, it's going to get frustrating.

It's not going to put you in a position where your business is achieving what you want.

It's going to get you feeling frustrated and, and that sends everyone and you and your company into a downward spiral.

So we want to avoid that.

So if you're frustrated not hitting the numbers that you want, let's reach out, let's have a conversation or, or let's talk.

Talk to anyone.

Talk to any sales mentor, any of my colleagues in the sales coaching industry.

Let's see if we can help you get on track to where you want to be.

So sorry to interrupt the podcast, but if you've got a sales issue at the moment that's really hacking you off, challenge me, I'll help you solve it.

Reach out to me.

Drop an email at hello Amesworth Business and I will help you solve your sales challenge.

There's not one I don't think I can't handle.

There's no sales issue that I can't resolve.

I've seen them all over my career.

I want to help you solve yours.

So reach out to me.

Let's make sure we handle your sales challenges and fix them so you can get back to smiling again.

Now back to the podcast.

So look, my, my podcast, as I always do, is finishing.

This week is on a inspirational story and I wanted to just share a little story of a young lady called Seren who is just six years old.

Last year she climbed the highest mountain in North Africa, which is Mount Tugabal in the Atlas Mountains in Morocco.

And, and, and she basically there was a hospital that saved her life when she was a little baby in Carmarthenshire.

And Seren has, you know, climbed this mountain which I think at 6 years old is quite incredible that she was able to, you know, make this eight hour walk and it was in, you know, temperatures of 40 degrees where they then reached the summit.

That was just the to to the base camp and they Then reached the summit next, the next day where they had this hot heat, you know, tough paths to go up this mountain.

And literally she did this at the age of 6 years old and she's raising money for the Birmingham Children's Hospital, which, you know, which saved her life when she was young because she was premature.

In the UK, which are, you know, Ben Nevis, Snowden, the Scarfield pike, which feet at, you know, the age of, the age of five, I thought four or five at that stage.

So this young lady is obviously, you know, focused on, you know, raising money to help her achieve things.

She's an incredible inspiration.

She's someone, I think at the age of six.

I shared a story on a previous podcast of a guy called Harry smith who was 13, but this young lady at 6 is Carly Mountains to raise money and I think, wow, when we see stuff like that, yeah, just inspires me and makes me think, right, that whatever I'm doing at my tender age, I, I know that I'm got Seren to be inspired by to if she's doing that at her age.

So that's it, that's the story for this week.

I, you know, it.

You know, I think you hope you get inspired by Sarah and I hope you get inspired to, to, to look at ways in which you can make the numbers happen.

If you are sitting here thinking they're not happening and I'm frustrated or I'm not sure what to do, my big message to you to finish the podcast off will be do something.

Don't just sit and expect things to change.

You know, Peter Drucker once said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results.

Make a change, make a commitment to do something new, bring some help in, bring some expertise in, go and find, speak to someone, whatever you do.

But if the numbers aren't happening, then value now to make a change, you can get back on track.

But that's it from this week for me, this week.

I hope you've enjoyed the podcast, as ever.

I hope if you have, please tell other people about it so we can help them achieve the sales targets that they want to.

But until next week, I will see you soon.

Stay safe, stay, stay well.

And I look forward to sharing some insights with you next week.

So, yeah, bye.

Bye.

So thank you so much for listening to this episode I hope you've enjoyed.

If you have, please subscribe to the podcast.

It helps us ensure more people can get the insights and ideas they need to get incredible sales results.

Look forward to seeing you on the next episode.