TSE 1233: How To Plan And Set Goals You Can Achieve In 2020

How To Plan And Set Goals You Can Achieve In 2020 With the new year comes new goals and resolutions. This episode’s guest offers new ways and suggestions to help you plan and set goals you can achieve in 2020. Many salespeople don’t realize that sales is easy if you follow a basic formula. Typically, however, sales reps have a habit of following the bouncing ball their prospects are throwing despite the many times it can lead to a dead end.  Dave Mattson started out as a client at (David) Sandler Training and he’s been with the company for 30 years. He worked his way up the organization and became a partner in 1994. He had an opportunity to work with Dave for six years before David passed away in 1995. Dave purchased the company in 2012 and is currently the Brand Manager and CEO. They have 265 training centers globally and just last year, they trained 31,000 people and streamed their training to 19,000 people.  This streamed training is becoming the way of the world, especially with the technology that is currently available. As a result, people in their system are represented by different age groups, different cultures, and different countries. Dave’s company creates content that is accessible in whatever format their clients need. For example, younger clients prefer several 4-minute micro trainings, versus a 45 minute lesson. With that knowledge, Sandler made 2,700 micro-learning lessons and added it to their suite of products and services.  Sales strategies keep evolving so Dave and his company must keep up with new trends.  With Sandler being one of the longest running companies, many people in the industry may view them as “dinosaurs” but year after year, they win awards for best sales training, management, and coaching. They clearly have the expertise to do it right.  Importance of goal setting and planning From a CEO’s perspective, planning is imperative to make sure all the different groups in the organization know where they’re going. The assumption is that you have great salespeople working for you, competent individuals, but you have to make sure  they are all heading in the right direction. It is the leader’s responsibility to see all the working parts. Each group needs to be assigned their tasks so everyone ultimately moves toward the organization’s goals.   As a leader, you need to set up a strategy on how to plan and set goals you can achieve in 2020. Layout the benchmarks you want your salespeople to achieve and how you intend to get there.  Show your team the contingency plans so they can better define daily goals for themselves. When the entire team has accountability, planning becomes a “we” exercise. The more you socialize it, the more people get involved. Dave suggests that for your corporate goal to become successful, each salesperson needs to link their commissions to personal goals that will keep them motivated.  A great question is, “If you earn your $250,000 commission, what are you going to do once you have your money?” Being able to visualize something that is meaningful to them, helps to keep up the momentum. There are two reasons why people leave a company.  The first is that they don’t feel like they're being stretched. The second is they don’t respect the person they work for. Sales leaders have to think of ways to motivate their sales reps to achieve their goal, not only for the organization but for individual goals as well.  When the team doesn’t play their role  The most common reason people say they don’t play their role say is they don’t have enough time. There has always been a serious time compression problem in sales. Many magazines claim that the top 3% of all producers are the people who have written down their goals so 97 out of 100 people don’t. This tells you how difficult the job of a sales leader is in an organization. They are in charge of producing revenue from people they can’t control. ...