We’ve reached the halfway point in the year which means it’s a good time to determine whether or not you’re on track to complete and achieve your annual goals.
If your sales reps are underachieving, don’t start panicking just yet. There are many ways you can still make this a successful year and even exceed your sales goals.
Here are 4 things that you can do now to help get ahead and start identifying and fixing issues to boost your second-half sales.
Identify Poor Performers
A large part of your success, or lack thereof, has to do with the performance of your sales reps. If your sales reps are underperforming, then you’re going to see it in your bottom line. In fact, according to the Salesforce State of Sales report, 57% of sales reps are not meeting their quota.
Now, there are many reasons a sales rep might be falling short, but as a sales leader, it’s your job to find out why and help motivate your rep to do better.
If the sales rep doesn’t have the right skill set or experience, then start exploring opportunities for training or spend more one-on-one time coaching and developing the rep. If the problem has to do with lack of motivation or discipline, you have to determine if the sales rep has the potential to succeed in the future, or if it’s time to replace them.
Once you have the right talent in place, you can focus on developing this top talent and hiring reps with similar skills and behaviors.
Provide Strong Performers with Additional Support
Once you’ve identified any underperforming sales reps, now you can move onto your top performers. The strong performers on your team are likely counting for a large percentage of your results so providing them with additional support can help them cover more accounts.
For example, you can have a junior representative handle smaller account renewals or follow-ups on certain types of issues or pull in additional administrative support to assist with paperwork or setting appointments. Leveraging the strengths of the people on your sales team can help accelerate growth and increase sales.
Review Stuck Accounts
Heading into the third quarter can be difficult. Decision-makers are more likely to be on vacation and accounts can be held up by unanticipated absences. Also, you may have a set of accounts that are moving much slower than normal through the sales process or accounts that aren’t fully qualified or aren’t ready to buy.
In any of these scenarios, it’s important to get involved and help the rep to unlock accounts and uncover the true reasons for a lack of progress. If necessary, enlist other members of the team to assist in closing the sale.
Evaluate Your Current Sales Strategy
It’s essential to assess the plans made at the start of the year to figure out what has or hasn’t been working. Have things changed in your market that you can’t control? What is the performance gap between the sales goals and actual results?
You may need to shift emphasis to different product lines, sales channels, or account types based on how the market is receiving your solutions. The key is to take a proactive approach to address the weaknesses in your plan.
The good news is that you still have months to reach your annual revenue goals. By taking action and evaluating your current situation now, it will make reaching those goals more attainable.
What other areas do you consider when making mid-year sales adjustments?
