How do You Determine the Right Activities for Successful Sales?
Do you w
ant to know what activities your sales professionals should be focused on? The first step is to figure out who are your Right Targets and Right Buyers (as I mentioned in Onboarding Sales Professionals).
Any sales professional should undertake a combination of activities, and which ones depends on the role. For context, I will focus on the outside business to business sales professional role. These sales take much longer and involve more stakeholders, even if there is only one economic buyer. Finding these opportunities require additional Right Activities to generate the revenue required for success.
Let’s look at some examples of different activities you may want to consider when creating an activity plan (this is by no means an exhaustive list – just some common ones).
- Inbound Leads
- Networking/Industry Events
- Social Media
- Referrals
- Cold Calling/Email Campaigns
- Seminars/Webinars
For each these types of activity, you need to answer the following questions:
- What is the estimated volume weekly of each type of activity?
- What is your conversion rate from an initial contact to a qualified sales opportunity?
- What is your close rate for qualified opportunities?
- What is the sales value of a typical deal from each type of activity?
Simplifying the Equation
Using this information, you can calculate how many leads your Sales Professional needs to generate from each activity type on a weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual basis to exceed their number.
Why is this valuable? It creates clarity and reduces anxiety for your team. A big annual sales quota intimidates many Sales Professionals. By going through this process, they can focus on what they need to accomplish for a week and know that if they achieve those weekly goals consistently, they will exceed their quota. It’s that simple.
Within a short period of time, this will also give you, as a sales leader, a roadmap so you can help your team get past any stumbling blocks. You will be able to better support them with situational coaching, additional marketing assistance, and teaming with them. You can adjust these activity metrics until you achieve the right mix to maximize their talents.
By the Way… There’s a Tool for That
Building a sales activity plan for the first time can be a bit overwhelming. That is why we want to share a tool the Corlea Group has created called the Sales Achievement Calculator. To get it, simply give us a call (858-863-9913) or send an email and let me know you would like it. We will send it right over.
