Setting Monthly Sales Goals

Hey, guys, it's Louis Massaro, author of 10 Rules of a Profitable Moving Company and founder of Moving Mastery. How do you keep your sales team motivated? You know, that's such a big and important question that, you know, you should look at on a regular basis and figure out new and exciting ways to constantly keep them, you know, incentivized and motivated and excited. Right? So today we're going to talk about one of the best ways, one of the most simple ways to do that, and that's setting monthly sales goals. You know, if you're not currently setting monthly sales goals for your sales team, you're missing out on a huge motivator, okay? And this could be if you have just one person that's, you know, doing your sales or if you have, you know, a team of 10. Either way, setting monthly sales goals is a big motivator, right? And as humans, we all need something to chase. You know, we need something to, you know, give us a little bit of a friendly competition and something to win and achieve. So even if you have somebody and they're not even a commission sales consultant, right, they're just someone in the office that takes sales calls and they receive a salary, maybe they do some other stuff as well. Or maybe you're a one man operation and it's just you, you could even set sales goals for yourself. But we're gonna talk about five simple steps that you could put in place if you're not doing monthly sales goals to get those going asap. This is something that will help increase your sales. If you're able to book more moves with the same amount of marketing that you have and the same amount of staff that you have, that only adds to your bottom line, that only increases profit. And really that's while you're in business, right? You want to make money. So by setting some sales goals and tying some bonuses to them, you'll really start to create an environment that's A, it's more exciting, you know, B, there's some friendly competition and C, they're going to book more moves because, you know, when someone's not really motivated, you know, if they're having a bad day. We're all human, right? We all have bad days. Maybe you didn't get enough sleep the night before, or maybe you're just upset about something and you come to work and you just not in the mood to make calls and people call in and you're not really feeling it and you're not really, you know, wanting to put the extra effort into trying to Book that move. Having an incentive out there, a bonus that you is yours to either take or lose, will help you overcome that, right? As a sales rep, you know, like I said, we've had. I've had over 50 sales consultants in one office, in one environment, and the monthly sales bonuses are a huge hit. And in other offices where we only had a few sales consultants, they were still a big hit. So today I'm gonna give you five steps to go ahead and set this up if you're not already doing it. There's a lot of ways and a lot of different types of metrics that you could tie to a monthly sales bonus. But let's talk about just a real simple way to get it going right away. And first thing you're going to want to do is set the goal. You're going to want to figure out what is it that you believe they can achieve, but it's also going to cause them to stretch a little bit. You don't want to set goals that are unrealistic and unattainable. You want to set goals to where it's going to push them to be, you know, a better version of themselves to where they're going to, you know, just, you know, if they work a little bit harder and they spend a little more time on the phone and a little less time out in smoke breaks, they could hit this goal. You're going to want to figure that out. So take a look at their last three months, right? What have they been bringing in? Excuse me, and figure out, like, what they're capable of, you know, and set a goal of what you'd like to see them achieve in the upcoming month. You know, a good rule of thumb, if you don't have, you know, if you can't really figure out what you want to set it as, you know, shoot for anywhere from 10 to 30% higher than the previous month, depending on the time of year. You know, if you're going in the slow season or you're going in the summer, you want to compensate for that. So, you know, there's going to be a natural upswing and downswing based on the seasons. But figure out a goal that, you know, you could sit down with them and discuss and say, hey, you think you could hit this? And say, yeah, I think I could hit that. You know, I could hit even more. The idea is you want to come up with something that is attainable but is also going to stretch them, right? So once you set the goal, then you need to set the bonus. So one of the easiest things to do is either say, hey, last month you booked $40,000 in business and your goal is 50,000 for this month, or if you want to do it based on number of moves, you could do that too. You know, once you get going and you start kind of trying a few different things, you'll figure out really what works for you. But you know, setting it up on the revenue is a good way to do it. This way they're not, you know, giving out discounts unnecessarily to get more moves, or, you know, they're spending time to go after the big moves, which you know you want them to do. So setting it on revenue is a good way to do it, right? But then you're going to want to set the bonus. What is it worth? What is it worth? You have to give them something that's going to make them excited. So I would say anywhere between 100 to $400 would be a good range of what the bonus could be for the month, depending on where they're at. I mean, if you have a rep that is booking 20,000 in business and you're trying to get them to book, you know, 25,000 in business, you know, their bonus is probably going to be, you know, 100, $125. You know, usually a good rule of thumb if you're trying to figure it out for this very basic level of setting monthly goals is take a half of a percent of whatever the goal is, right? So if the goal is 50,000, you would take half of 1%, which would be $250, right? So if you're trying to get them to, to bring in 50,000, their goal for the month, if they hit 50,000, they're going to get $250, right? So you set that goal, you make them aware of it. And what you're going to want to do next is you're going to want to break it down for them, alright? You're going to want to show them, you know, I like to bring them into my office and sit with them one on one and talk with them and say, look, here's your goal. And then break it down and show them what that means per day, right? I mean, the goal when you break it down per day may only be, you know, three extra moves a week, right? Or one extra move a day. And they then believe, wow, I could do that. I could definitely book one extra move a day, or I could definitely book three extra moves a week, right? When you look at a big number for the month. It might seem unattainable, but you want to chunk it down for them. You want to show them, listen, don't worry about the whole month. Every day. Just put in a little extra effort and whatever their goal breaks down to figure out what it's going to be and show them how simple it is. Look, you only need one extra move a day, or you only need three extra moves a week. Whatever the goal is, and however it breaks down, break it down for them because it'll be a big motivator for them to see, wow, I could just make these little incremental steps, you know, maybe I'll take a few less smoke breaks and, you know, a shorter lunch or, you know, make a few extra calls. But when you break it down, it's a big motivator because now they feel like they can do it, right? There's no point of setting goals if they don't feel they could achieve it. And nobody ever achieves the goals, right? You want them to achieve them. So the next step, number four is a weekly update, all right? Every week during this monthly period where you're going to set a monthly sales goal, you're going to want to send them an update of where they're at, right? Just email it to them. Or if you want to bring them in the office or if you want to have a sales meeting and kind of discuss with everybody where they're at, it's really up to you how you want to go about it. But at a minimum, send them an email and say, hey, here's your goal and here's where you are now, and here's how much further you have to go. You know, give them some encouragement. It's not about trying to dangle it out there to where they can't reach it. You want them to reach it, right? Because if they reach their goal, that's more money for you and more money for your company. So when you're setting your bonus amount, make sure it's a bonus you feel comfortable with. Make sure it's a bonus that when they hit that goal, you're very quick to write them that check or give them that gift card or whatever. However you're going to bonus them, make sure it's something you're comfortable with and excites them because you want them to get it. Okay? They're not going to get it every month, but, you know, usually you want somebody in the office to win, right? To get their bonus, because it then becomes believable, you know, if you set them too High. And no one's ever achieving it. They're just going to be like, yeah, yeah, okay, you're going to give me 400 bucks, okay, but I'm never going to hit that. When they start seeing themselves be able to hit the goal, when they start seeing their teammates hitting the goal, it becomes real, right? And now they break themselves out of the comfort zone, and they visualize themselves as a different type of sales consultant, Right. You know, they form an identity early on where it's like, hey, every month I book 40,000. That's kind of my, you know, that's what I do. That's my caliber. That's the type of, you know, sales consultant I am. But when you help them to break out of that and they go to 45, they go to 50, they go to 60, they're like, wow, like, I'm, you know, I could book 60, 70, 80,000amonth. Right? Once they see themselves in that light, they're going to start producing more, right? Their booking percentage is going to go higher. The amount of leads it takes for them to get moves is going to be lower. So, you know, you want to make sure that you're keeping them motivated as well. And the last step is number five. When you do give these bonuses out, make it a big deal, okay? When you do it, whether it's one person in the office or several people get their bonus, make a big announcement, you know, have a meeting. You know, even if it's two minutes, you get everybody off the phone and make it exciting, right? Make them feel really good, like they just won something big, and let everybody else that didn't reach their goal see that as well and cheer for them and clap and make it a big deal, make it exciting. Part of setting the goal is not just to set the goal and forget about it. It's to also create excitement in your office. When you create some excitement in your office and there's a little buzz going around between your sales team and there's a little friendly competition, and everybody wants to reach that goal. You're going to book more moves. It's going to be a more lively environment. You're going to see. You're going to have reps that used to kind of maybe sit back and, you know, take calls. They're going to be standing up now, and they're going to be excited. You know, when you give them something to shoot for, you know, especially a monthly sales goal. That's why if you're not doing. There's a lot of other ways to incentivize and spiffs and different types of bonuses, but a monthly sales goal to tied to a specific dollar amount. Whether they're a salaried employee or a commission, it doesn't matter when they think that they can get an extra couple hundred dollars a month. You know, when you look at things on a monthly basis, you tie that to maybe bills you have to pay or you're like, wow, I could go lease that car that I want to get if I get this bonus every month or whatever it is for them. But when they have something to shoot for, it creates some excitement. Alright, so if you're not doing this or you were doing it, or if you do it every once in a while, make this a practice, put this in place and do it every month. It may take them, your sales team, a month or two to get motivated and get excited about it. If it's something new, they may all be like, wow, yeah, this is great, okay. And you may see the change right away, but put it in place, keep them motivated, break it down for them so they could see, look, all you have to do is this and this on a daily basis. Send them a weekly update, keep them motivated, keep pushing them towards their goal. It's only going to drive your sales up. I'm telling you, if you're not doing this, put this in place right away, you're going to see your sales go up, you're going to see your marketing cost go down because you don't have to buy as many leads to book the same amount of moves and you're going to become more profitable. You're going to have happy employees, they're going to be making money, they're going to want to stay around, they're going to tell their friends, hey, you know, if you need more employees, they're going to tell their friends, hey, come work here. And you're going to be able to recruit higher caliber of sales consultants because they can make a little extra money there. Alright? If you're not already signed up for my blog, head over LouisMassaro.com sign up. I'm sending out great information every week on moving sales, customer service, productivity, mindset, you know, everything you need to take your business to that next level. All right? So until then, go out and profit in business, thrive in life. I'll see you later.