How We Help Our Sales Team Hit Their Annual Quota

The beginning of the year is a very anxious time of year at BrightGauge.  For us, Q4 is our biggest quarter of the year and the Sales team hustles until the end of the year leaving no stone unturned. So when the calendar changes, we are still coming off the “high” of Q4 and the year end rush.

But now the page has turned on the prior year, the high fives have been doled out and the champagne has been poured... it’s time to focus on this year.  The entire sales team gets very anxious when we start planning the new year wondering “how’s my compensation changing” or “what’s my new quota going to be”.

By the second week of January I sit with the Sales Team and we lay out the quota for the year. Like clockwork I can see them in their heads calculating all the work they have to do for the year which seems like a daunting task.  But like I tell our Sales Team:

“Don’t sweat the annual goal, focus on the daily & weekly hustle”

At the end of the day, Sales is a numbers game.  Although the percentages may be different based on how good you are, it's still a game of getting as many non-customers as possible into your funnel and then working them through the funnel to customer status.  When we told Stephen his quota had almost doubled to $80,000 after last year doing $45,000 he had a minor panic attack. But then we took the annual goal and broke it down into daily & weekly goals.  

Here’s how our annual Sales formula works:

• $80,000 - total new business Stephen needs to book in 2017
• $64,000 - total revenue from new customers (80%)
• $16,000 - total revenue from upgrades of existing customers (20%)

• $250 - Average Sales Price
• $75 - Average Upgrade Amount

• 256 - Number of Signups Required ($64,000 / $250)
• 213 - Number of Upgrades Required ($16,000 / $75)
  
  
• 512 - Number of Opportunities Required (256 deals @ 50% closure rate)

At the end of the calculations, we translate that $80,000 quota into the following:

• 10 Opportunities Opened Per Week
• 7 Demos Completed Per Week
• 40 Conversations Per Week

And instead of worrying about the $80,000 all Stephen has to do is worry about what he needs to get done today and this week.  And to always remember:

“Don’t sweat the annual goal, focus on the daily & weekly hustle”

Now that we have his targets for each week, we use our BrightGauge Scorecards to monitor his progress each week.  

This allows him and the entire team to see if he’s on track or off track for a given week and course correct as necessary.  The more green the better!  And this also has the added psychological benefit of taking a monster quota goal and breaking it down into bite size chunks that are easier for Stephen to focus on.

To learn more about scorecards and how to help your team monitor weekly progress towards their KPIs, please visit our BrightGauge Scorecards Overview.