There’s something a lot of business owners get wrong about sales targets. It’s simply this: They usually misunderstand the reason for setting these important targets. And in doing so, they miss all the important stuff. The stuff that helps them achieve spectacular sales results, month after month and year after year.

Here’s why you need to set sales targets, along with 13 examples.

Why sales targets are essential

The reason you need sales targets is to improve the sales effectiveness of your business.

• Not to motivate you to work harder.
• Not to motivate you to do more of the same, only faster.
• Not to treat it like the daily steps target on your smartphone app.

No!

You need to make changes in order to:

1. Improve your knowledge of the marketing strategies and tactics that work best today.
2. Improve the quality of prospects you attract.
3. Improve the story people in your marketplace have, when they talk about your business.
4. Improve how you measure the sales-effectiveness of your marketing activities.
5. Improve the commercial value of your contact network.
6. Improve the experience of doing business with you.
7. Improve the way your business looks to the outside world. Design, photos, use of social media, etc.
8. Improve your marketing response rates.
9. Improve your awareness of the problems your prospects are most concerned about.
10. Improve the way you handle inbound enquiries from prospects.
11. Improve how visible you are to your target market.
12. Improve the number of advocates your business has.
13. Improve your marketing decision making.

And carry on improving, until you get the maximum return from all your marketing and sales efforts. When you do, you’ll start to benefit from compound marketing. Compound marketing does for your sales results, what compound interest does for your money. It grows at an accelerating rate.

When it happens, your business will experience exponential growth. So set those sales targets, and let them inspire you to make the improvements required. You have everything to gain.

Here’s what business owners are telling me, in increasing numbers every day.

Our website used to generate regular sales or leads. Now it doesn’t.

Our newsletter used to attract client enquiries. Now it doesn’t.

Our Linkedin, Facebook (whatever) activity used to regularly drive decent traffic to our website. Now it doesn’t.

Our business used to grow steadily each year. Now it doesn’t.

Our future used to look promising. Now it doesn’t.

When things are heading in the wrong direction, literally the only commercially viable option you have is to change direction. To try something better. Something different. Something new. This means either adjusting elements of your existing marketing strategy, replacing elements of your marketing strategy or creating a new marketing strategy that’s designed for the unique economic conditions we all face.

The main challenge here is that everyone, including me, finds the process of change at least a little scary. However, when used correctly, that uneasy feeling can be what drives you and your business forward.

Allow me to explain.

There’s a business maxim I’ve heard many times over the years. You have probably heard it too. “If it doesn’t feel scary, it’s not moving you forward”. In other words, when you’re heading in the wrong direction, you can use fear as your compass, to guide you forward.

And conversely, if you feel entirely comfortable about putting your changes into play, it could be that you’re aiming too low for the kind of improvement you need.

For a multitude of different reasons, these are truly challenging times. And there’s nothing to suggest that things will ping back to anything like the way they were before the 2020’s.

None of us (small business owners like you and me) can tough this one out. It’s a 100%, totally open-ended situation. This means that every day you try to stay as you are, you’re actually going backwards at an accelerating pace, compared to your proactive competitors.

So, use your compass. And embrace the changes you know you need, even if they are a little scary.

One component of successful marketing, is knowing what needs to be done.

A second component of successful marketing, is to put that knowledge into action.

And an essential third component of successful marketing, is to keep on doing what’s required. Once things start moving, they need to keep on moving. Lasting success requires an ongoing effort. Continuous forward movement.

Marketing momentum

Before you know it, you’ve created true marketing momentum. Marketing momentum is where your intelligent activity (doing the right things, correctly) combines, to attract the results you need. For example, an increasing number of; sales leads, sales conversions, client enquiries, new clients, proposal requests, bid requests, client referrals, new subscribers, media requests… exciting times for sure.

Here’s the reason I’m sharing this with you: Once you’ve created marketing momentum, that momentum must be maintained and sustained.

• You need to keep actioning your ideas.
• You need to carry on looking for great opportunities.
• You need to turn up again and again and again.
• You need to consistently review and increase your targets or goals, as old ones are achieved,
• You need to remain dedicated to improving how your business operates.
• You need to keep working your plans.
• You need to carry on delighting your clients.
• You need to stay on the lookout for people who can improve your business.
• You need to repeatedly make big, exciting promises and then deliver.

Doing all of the above is easy at the start, especially if you have an existential need for more clients or more customers. But when all the important marketing numbers are moving in the right direction and things are going great, finding the motivation to keep your marketing momentum moving forward can become harder.

And momentum soon fizzles out when left unattended.

This is something I work on regularly with new clients. Interestingly, very few ever think it will be a problem for them. This is largely because when people hire me, they do so when they’re looking for massive increases in sales and financial results. They’re in the ideal mindset for creating momentum.

But.

As things start to improve, with exciting results moving all their important numbers in the right direction, they unconsciously think they’ve arrived. That this new level of success is a destination. Irreversible, so long as they work hard.

They forget they were already working hard before hiring me… and hard work didn’t produce the results they wanted.

Momentum needs to be invested in regularly. You won’t need reminding of this at the beginning. However, this could change when your marketing is taking your business and your lifestyle to a whole new, exciting level. So keep moving forward.