Every year managers set yearly sales goals and commitments for themselves and for their sales team. These goals might have been:

• Sanctioned from the top
• Developed through a mutual collaboration between the salesperson and the sales manager
• Have been calculated by a formulaic process based on the salesperson
• Created from the marketplace and their territory
• Developed and disseminated to their salespeople with a more reactive ambiguity, (“Just get out there and sell more this year!”)

No matter what, the majority of managers want to do better and better each year.

While some level of goal setting activity has taken place or a declaration has been made by the manager how important it is to “do better this year,” it’s the deeper conversation that follows the goal decree. This is often missing within sales organizations, and that needs to be facilitated by management. 

If you’re a salesperson or non selling professional reading this, and you feel that your manager may not have this conversation, use this as a template to self evaluate, as the questions you’ll find here are applicable and critical to ask yourself as well.

Sure, you may have set the sales goals with your sales team, and you may have even discussed strategy with them. You may have gone as far as having your salespeople submit a business plan to support this. While these are healthy practices for management and for their salespeople, these sparkles of management brilliance do not encapsulate the full composition needed to ensure success throughout the year.

When discussing your sales goals with your salespeople, did you address the following topics?

• Their level of buy in around their goal.
• Their level of confidence around attaining their goal.
• The potential roadblocks that can sabotage their efforts and prevent them from reaching their goals.
• The role they want you, as their manager, to play in supporting them.
• How they want to be managed around their goals.
• How they want to be held accountable around reaching their goals and how they want you to approach them if they drop the ball.
• The structure they need to put in place regarding how they will manage their daily activity that will move them towards attaining their goals.

What follows is a brief outline to use when conducting this conversation with your salespeople around their yearly sales goals. This creates buy in, while ensuring your salespeople to buy into being coached and supported by you.

You will notice that these questions will address the gaps I mentioned that often go overlooked until it’s too late. And you know it’s too late when managers find themselves in the reactionary position; spending their time managing problems and putting out fires rather than managing goals and coaching their salespeople on achieving them.

Please note that the following outline and questions have been developed with a few assumptions in mind:

• First: you are already coaching your salespeople.
• Second: your sales team is bought into being coached by you.
• Third: you are truly coaching them using a proven coaching framework (rather than relabeling how you managed them yesterday and calling it coaching).
• Fourth: their sales goals have already been established. (We’re not talking about their personal goals at this time.)

Keep in mind, this is just an outline. While it’s critical to appreciate the importance of having this conversation with each of your salespeople, you may want to fine tune it to best fit your situation.

Step One: Schedule at least a one-hour meeting

This is a conversation too important for anyone to rush through. After all, planning for the race always takes longer than the race itself.

Step Two: Set the expectations and objectives of your meeting

For example, “I want you to achieve a level of success this year that’s going to make you feel great and provide you with a sense of fulfillment and satisfaction that you really want in your career. That’s why I want to use our time today to discuss your goals, how I can support you around achieving them and how together, we can develop the best strategy for you that’s going to drive the results you want.”

Step Three: Discuss the goals that have been set

Ask questions such as:

• How do you feel about your goals?
• How did you come up with that goal? (If they did so vs. having a sanctioned quota)
• How confident are you about achieving this goal?
• Why? What’s making you feel that way?
• What would it mean to you if you achieved these goals? (Personally/professionally)

Step Four: Uncover how they want to be managed and held accountable 

Tap into each person’s individuality by uncovering what motivates each person and enroll them in coaching. The timing to do so is perfect, as coaching is the means for them to achieve their goal. Management needs to support their people without having to do their job for them or be the chief problem solver. But remember, if you don’t know what drives each one of your producers to get out of bed every day, it will be very difficult to motivate and coach them.

Facilitate the motivation conversation using the following questions:

• What are the parts of your job that you’re exited about and motivate you?
• What motivates you to come to work every day?
• What do you want to/need to achieve in the short term/long-term that will support your goals?
• How can I best manage and support you to achieve these goals? (This is a great opportunity to discuss creating their Coaching Action Plan to determine the frequency and parameters of your coaching with them.)
• How do you like to be rewarded/acknowledged for a job well done?
• How will we measure your success and progress along the way? (30, 60 and 90 day milestones and mini-goals are critical to maintain your sales team’s focus and motivation throughout the entire year. A year end goal is a long way off. So, celebrate wins along the way and use these milestones as an opportunity to adjust or modify their strategy if necessary.)
• What might sabotage your efforts to achieve these goals? What do we need to look out for that would get in the way of achieving your goals? What safeguards can we put into place to ensure that doesn’t happen?
• What structure do you need to put into place in order to make sure you’re engaging in the right activities each day that support your goals while keeping the distractions at bay? (Hint: A structured routine!)
• How can I hold you accountable around your goals in a way that will sound supportive rather than negative?
• How do you want me to approach you if you don’t follow through with the commitments you make? What would be a good way to bring this up? How do you want me to handle it?

Step Five: Debrief

Now it’s time to take their pulse and gauge their reaction and feelings around your conversation.

• So, how are you feeling about our conversation? What’s standing out most for you?
• What concerns, if any, do you have any moving forward?
• To reconfirm next steps, what are you going to be working on next? (What are the action steps you’ll be taking based on our conversation today? When will you have that completed by?)
• Lets go ahead and schedule our next meeting. What are you willing to commit to having completed by then?
• I’m looking forward to working with you so that you can achieve your goals this year!

Tip From Your Coach

Give your salespeople the space to answer these questions. Remember, some of these questions are not only questions you may have never asked your salespeople, but questions they, themselves have never been asked before. So, don’t rush them through this important process of self-discovery and do make sure they answer your questions completely.

After effectively facilitating this conversation, you and your team will have a greater sense of comfort, confidence and a stronger focus regarding what they need to do to achieve their goals and what you can do to support them that will create a successful year for your company, your team and yourself.