Beating Sales Targets in 2022 and Beyond

What are the 4 leading indicators of sales success when it comes to hitting your sales forecast? Here’s your sales pipeline guide for 2022 and beyond.

All CEOs want to know which of their salespeople are likely to break through annual revenue targets by midnight, December 31st.

To answer the question definitively, because we know “Hope Is Not A Strategy” (Rick Page, 2001), these same CEOs could have been tracking and adjusting to leading indicators of success for many months already. All it would have required is a commitment to managing each salesperson to a well-defined, data-centric sales pipeline.

There are four leading indicators of success we recommend tracking to enable this level of visibility and control over revenue performance. They are the Number of Qualified Opportunities (#), Average Deal Value ($), Average Win Rate (%), and Average Sales Cycle Time (T) produced by each salesperson. All four of these combine to power our Pipeline Flow Formula.

When salespeople don’t play favorites and dedicate themselves to improving all four of these metrics at the same time, they gain the ability to achieve an exponential impact on revenue growth. For example, improving each metric by just 8% per quarter will double revenues in just three quarters.​

The numbers are powerful. Unfortunately, if you’re just starting to look at them now, you’re probably too late to change your fate in 2021.

2022, however, could be an entirely different story!

No Time Like The Present

So where do you start? My strong recommendation is to start with the leading indicator that represents the weakest of the four metrics in your Pipeline Flow Formula. To gain this insight, have each of your salespeople complete the simple self-assessment available here.

In lieu of the assessment, most find the best place to start is at the beginning of the sales pipeline with the prospecting engine that connects your marketing funnel to your sales pipeline. In other words, start by focusing on how predictably and reliably your salespeople are able to convert marketing-qualified leads (MQLs) into qualified sales opportunities.

Below I’ve shared a detailed success guide we use to start the conversation with our own clients. Use this to quickly identify gaps in your sales team’s current prospecting skills and processes, then hit me up if you have any questions.

Here’s to a great year!

Together,

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Floriss Prospecting Success Guide

  1. Build a pre-qualified contact list based on your ‘always customer’ and ‘always buyer’ profiles.
    1. Have these lists update within CRM on a weekly or monthly basis.
    2. Include essential contact info, e.g., office and mobile numbers, as well as predictive demographic insights.
  2. Align and integrate Account Based Marketing (ABM) and Account Based Selling (ABS) plans.
    1. Make scoring and predictive intelligence/insights visible to the sales rep to enable prioritization.
  3. Provide access to proven sources of research to continue the qualification process and identify predictive circumstance and event triggers that will help personalize outreach.
    1. Research will also ensure we are asking the right question when connect with a buyer.
  4. Build a seamless prospecting process into your CRM with low/no click activity tracking and dashboard reporting.
    1. This will enable high-volume/quality activity and continuous improvement.
  5. Ensure your CRM and sales technology is used to optimize performance, including:
    1. Calendaring and time blocking to ensure plans are executed.
    2. An email system with a custom, 1-to-1 capability, e.g., no “unsubscribe.”
    3. Dialing and call recording with transcription.
    4. Conversation and key word analysis for management coaching. 
  6. Complete your Sales GPS™ (goal, plan, scorecard) and sales formula
    1. Mathematically translate monthly sales goals into key metrics, like selling days, dials, conversations, first meetings-to-qualified opportunities, second meetings-to-recommendations, proposals-to-wins, etc.
  7. Optimize your activity planning and time blocking by day, week and month.
    1. Qualified list generation
    2. Email-call cadence (4-8 touches)
    3. Cadence execution with CRM data entry
    4. Dashboard analysis, performance assessment, etc.
    5. Process adjustments and forward planning for the following week
  8. Write, test, and adjust emails and call scripts designed to open buying conversations.
    1. Emails written and A/B tested to optimize open and conversion rates.
    2. Call scripting developed for a 5-10 min conversation to set first meeting.
  9. Outline your ideal first qualifying meeting agenda?
    1. Who should be on the call and who should not?
    2. What qualifying questions are must-haves vs nice-to-haves?
    3. What information are you sharing?
    4. What commitments are you expecting?
    5. What next step are you closing for?
  10. Outline your ideal first selling meeting agenda?
    1. Who should be on the call, e.g., additional buying center members?
    2. What questions are you asking?
    3. What information are you sharing?
    4. What commitments are you expecting?
    5. What next step are you closing for?

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