4 Ways to Hit Your 2016 Sales Targets

Heading into the New Year is an opportune time to re-examine how you approach your sales targets and re-evaluate your strategies to ensure that you reach your goals in 2016. However, hitting a year’s worth of sales targets means more than just a few tricks up your sleeve. Your team needs to be prepared and confident in their competencies, and groomed to act as company ambassadors. Here are four proven concepts to help your crew reach their highest potential.

Focus on sales enablement.

Forbes says that 59% of companies that beat their sales targets in 2015 prioritized sales enablement through a defined function. The same Forbes study found that 55% of companies named sales enablement technology as a top priority investment when it comes to increasing sales productivity.  

Ensure that each sales associate on your team has the tools that she needs to crush her sales targets in 2016, including access to just-in-time content, training in best practices, and the resources to research her prospects prior to each sales conversation.

Have high-value conversations with prospects.

Every minute of your prospect’s time is valuable, so treat him accordingly by packing your conversations with the most relevant information possible for his particular use case. Prior to making that call, research your prospect and his pain points, and prepare to present your solution in a way that directly addresses each of those points without any fluff or redundancy.

Highlight the valuable features that make your product the most appropriate solution for that particular application, and show your client how you’re taking his needs into consideration.

Always have an answer with “just-in-time” content.

Your sales associates go into each conversation as well-prepared as possible, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that each dialogue will go as planned. It’s vital to your team’s success that each associate has access to just-in-time content that she can seamlessly search, access, and inject into conversations wherever appropriate.

If an unexpected question comes up, your sales team needs the ability to answer it quickly without stalling or saying “I’ll call you back.” Keeping your prospect on the line is key to closing the deal, and just-in-time content gives your team the capability to make that happen.

Keep your team in sync.

With training materials and shared knowledge in constant flux, it’s important that all of your team has access to the same information simultaneously. Shared resources should be connected to the cloud so that when one associate makes an edit or adds a note, everyone can see the change instantaneously.

At the same time, you need the ability to quickly push updated resources to the entire team without requiring them to pick up a hard copy or download a static file that could get lost in the shuffle. Cloud-based field reference platforms give you the ability to synchronize your entire team at once without any hassle.

This year, reconvene around the idea that it may be time to innovate. Put the systems in place to make sure your team is synced up with the sales enablement systems and content they need to focus on high-value conversations and (dare we say) exceed sales targets.