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What An MBA Didn’t Teach You About Sales

The sales profession is challenging. You need to work hard at it to succeed. You need to learn from the best. You need to improve your skills continuously. If you think you can sell since you are a hit at parties and have a lot of friends, you may soon find that you are a failure as a salesperson. Blunt truth:

because the sales profession is so hard, you have to focus on doing everything in sales very well, or you will be considered a failure.

I call this blog, Skinned Knees because I try to relate all of the learning that I have done over the past 4+ decades (while skinning my knees in the learning process).

I hope that you learn from my mistakes so that your business will grow!

Transform Your Sales Team: Strategic Compensation Adjustments for Year-End Momentum

Autumn is the time of year for sales leaders, managers, and CEOs to begin laying the groundwork for next year’s success. Have you considered how your current sales compensation plans impact your team’s motivation and productivity? Now is the ideal moment to evaluate, adjust, and deliver these plans, preferably by December 1st. Doing so can significantly influence your team’s drive to close deals in December and build momentum heading into the next fiscal year.

Sales compensation should be motivating and rewarding for employees. It directly shapes your sales team’s behaviors and priorities. An effective plan incentivizes the right actions and deters the wrong ones.

Consider a common pitfall: salespeople holding back deals to inflate their numbers for the following year. Does your current compensation structure inadvertently reward this practice? If so, you’re unintentionally harming your year-end results.

To counter this, strategically incorporate compensation escalators and cliffs into your plan. Escalators progressively reward increased sales performance throughout the year. Higher performance equals higher commission rates, driving your sales team to push forward continually. 

Commission cliffs reset commission rates at the beginning of each year, creating a sense of urgency to close deals before the end of December. Communicating these compensation details clearly by early December ensures your team understands what’s at stake.

Don’t hold your team back!

Another critical compensation consideration is eliminating commission caps. While some organizations cap commissions to control expenses, this practice can backfire dramatically. Caps tell your top-performing salespeople that their exceptional efforts are neither valued nor rewarded appropriately. This demotivates your top talent and encourages them to seek opportunities elsewhere that offer uncapped rewards. 

Removing commission caps signals that the organization fully supports and rewards outstanding performance. Have you considered how much growth your company might achieve if artificial constraints didn’t limit your sales team?

When evaluating compensation, look beyond simple cost containment. Consider the true profitability of incentivizing increased sales volume. Once salespeople reach their targets and enter accelerators, each additional dollar earned typically comes at a lower incremental cost to your organization. 

Sales transactions earlier in the year have already covered the salesperson’s base salary once they have met their annual quota. In fact, at 100% of quota, the salesperson should have covered all their costs and their share of the overall company’s revenue needs. Thus, every extra sale at escalated commission rates still contributes positively to your overall profitability. 

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Nine of Spades: Addressing Salesperson Underperformance: Setting Performance Benchmarks: Define standards for success to measure against.

Understanding the Nature of Sales Benchmarks Let’s start by grounding ourselves in the foundational premise: Sales benchmarks are not merely numerical goals but the defining coordinates of success. If you will, consider them as your organization’s North Star, guiding your sales team through the complexities of quotas, customer relationships, and revenue targets. Benchmarks transcend the limitations of raw numbers and extend into the realm of qualitative assessment—whether it’s the ability to understand customer needs or… Nine of Spades: Addressing Salesperson Underperformance: Setting Performance Benchmarks: Define standards for success to measure against.

The Kaivac Impact: Harnessing Faith, Innovation, and Sales Excellence in the Cleaning Industry

Revenue and profitability have grown since Sean helped Kaivac develop a higher level of sales professionalism. Recent results have shown a dramatic increase in revenue and profitability. The sales and revenue growth have allowed the entire family of Kaivac to prosper. The Robinsons have always considered their employees an extension of their family. The company’s prosperity is passed along to team members through a bonus structure for the whole company. It all fits into the spirit of Kaivac. Bob Jr. says, “Our organization was built to have heart.”

Tip #11 of 12 – How To Start The New Year STRONG! – Reward Yourself For Small Wins

In any career, it’s important to recognize and reward yourself for your small successes along your journey. Salespeople are often guilty of pushing themselves too hard and forgetting to celebrate their smaller accomplishments. As a salesperson or manager, you will increase your motivation to keep pushing forward by recognizing those moments of progress. Celebrating said wins helps you stay focused on achieving larger goals and fosters a healthy corporate culture that validates individual growth within… Tip #11 of 12 – How To Start The New Year STRONG! – Reward Yourself For Small Wins

Tip #2 of 12 – How To Start The New Year STRONG! – Set a big goal for the year ahead

We have all heard of the 12 days of Christmas. This post is part of my series of 12 posts on how to strongly start the new year and drive revenue for your company and you. In this video, we discuss the following: GOALS MATTER! Always start the New Year committed to making 100% of your quota! In fact, you should set a goal of OVER 100% of your quota! You can check out all… Tip #2 of 12 – How To Start The New Year STRONG! – Set a big goal for the year ahead

Two Tall Guys Talking Sales Podcast: How Do You Determine Your Company’s Sales Objectives Each Year?

In this episode, Kevin and Sean discussed the importance of setting appropriate sales goals for a company. They suggested starting with the end goal in mind and then working backward to set achievable but challenging targets. They also advise avoiding pitfalls such as not considering attrition or overstating possibilities when setting goals. Finally, they emphasize the importance of dedicating resources to new markets or initiatives to grow the business rather than only replacing lost customers.

You can subscribe to our podcast by searching in your favorite podcast player for “Two Tall Guys Talking Sales,” or you can listen to the embedded version here.

The following is a transcript of the podcast above. It has been sparsely edited to increase its readability, but many of the idioms and poor spoken grammar have been left in place. Fireflies.ai automatically generated the transcription, and, as capable as that product is, there are times when words are missed or the sentence structure is incorrectly interpreted. We have tried to catch all of these software misses, but we are confident that some still remain. The below text is provided for those that would rather read than listen to a podcast.

00:00

Kevin Lawson

Hello, and welcome to episode two, not eight, of “Two Guys Talking Sales.” I’m one of your hosts, Kevin. 

00:10

Sean O’Shaughnessey

And I’m Sean. 

00:11

Kevin Lawson

We’re glad you’re here on this Two Guys Talking Sales episode. 

This podcast tackles real sales issues, big and small, for salespeople selling situations and sales leadership. We’ve individually built successful sales careers around the problems and solutions in B-to-B selling, from software and services to manufacturing distribution. We have sold to and for many of the world’s most recognized brands as well as some you have yet to hear of. We know LinkedIn says this is a 30-minute time slot. Still, we’ll only take 15 minutes—nothing like under-promising and over-delivering. For roughly the next 15 minutes, we invite you into our world of experience. We’ll dig into one issue. You’ll have a solution should you encounter a similar situation in your career. Let’s dive in. 

Sean, let’s set the stage. 

01:07

Sean O’Shaughnessey

This topic should be about setting your sales plan objectives for this year. 

01:15

Kevin Lawson

Setting objectives for the year. Like not being tongue-tied on a public broadcast. How about that? 

01:21

Sean O’Shaughnessey

At least you tried to plan ahead and had it written. Now that’s better than I did. I’m just winging it. 

01:25

Kevin Lawson

Our last episode was all about planning your year. Why not have a plan? Well, so you’ll know how you’re doing? 

01:32

Sean O’Shaughnessey

There you go. 

01:33

Kevin Lawson

Today, we will talk about how to determine company sales objectives. Yes, let’s do that. 

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Determining Your Company’s Sales Objectives Each Year

As a company owner, one of the most important aspects of running a successful business is setting and achieving sales objectives. But how do you determine what those objectives should be? Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you set realistic and achievable sales goals for your business.

Sales objectives are goals a company sets for its sales team to achieve over a certain period. These objectives can be anything from increasing revenue by a certain percentage to selling a certain number of products or services. Sales objectives should be set annually, but they can also be set for shorter periods such as quarters or months.

Let’s talk about the basic steps first.

  1. Define your overall goal.
  2. Break down your overall goal into smaller, more manageable goals.
  3. Create a timeline for each goal.
  4. Assign responsibility for each goal to a specific team member or department.
  5. Measure progress and revise objectives as needed.
  6. Celebrate accomplishments and learn from failures.
  7. Define your overall goal.

Sales goals are essential for any company regardless of size. They give you a target to aim for and help to motivate your sales team. Without a goal, getting complacent and falling into bad habits is easy.

It’s essential to clearly understand your company’s sales process before setting a goal. You need to know your closing rate, average deal size, and how many leads you need to generate to hit your target. Once you have this information, you can start to play around with different numbers to see what’s realistic.

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