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> Living on the Top Line - The Book > Joe's Blog > You Probably Set Your Goals Too Low
You Probably Set Your Goals Too LowMany furniture retailers pay salespeople a commission on their sales as their primary compensation method. Many also assign performance goals based on the company's budgetary needs for revenue, then their sales managers work toward achieving these goals.
In virtually every consulting situation I've been involved in since 1993, when salespeople have been consulted and asked to set their own goals based on their needs for income and an improved quality of life for them and their families, those goals have been considerably higher than those set by the company. Wouldn't it make sense to work together with your salespeople to achieve THEIR goals instead of being satisfied as business owners when your employees goals are NOT met? If you can help them, coach them, and lead them to THEIR goals, your company goals will be achieved and exceeded.
This is one of those areas of business management where I believe many furniture store owners are disconnected from their employees' needs, and miss a powerful opportunity for sales revenue growth with no additional customers needed and no additional advertising dollars required. Just better individual performance.
To understand the magnitude of this issue to your store and to your people, begin with the following analysis:
Look at your individual sales performance statistics over the past six months. List your salespeople showing their number of customer opportunities in one column and their total written sales in another. Divide the sales dollars by the number of opportunities to get each individual's "performance index" or Revenue-per-Opportunity. Calculate what your sales volume MIGHT have been by multiplying your total number of opportunities by the HIGHEST performance index. The difference between your actual sales and these calculated sales is your potential growth from that total number of customer opportunities going forward.
To achieve this level of sales, connect to the goals of the people who do the work.
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