7 Tips to guarantee* you hit your sales quota

*okay, so obviously I can’t GUARANTEE you hit your quota as a sales rep, but if you use these tips, you’ll crush your sales quota.

Understand your sales quota

I know this one sounds simple but without knowing what you’re expected to sell, it’s impossible to know whether you’re doing a good job. There are lots of different types of quotas. Traditional quotas require a sales rep to sell a certain amount of their product or service per month/quarter/year. There are activity quotas that require a sales rep to do an activity. This means the rep is supposed to make a certain number of calls, emails, or something else. A team-based quota requires your entire sales team (you and your team members) to sell a certain amount. Your whole team will get paid based on whether the sales team meets the quota.

If you’re lucky, your quota is VERY straightforward; something like $30,000 of new business revenue per month. Maybe it’s based on top-line profit for the company. However, a lot of companies have complex quotas that require upsells, renewals, new business, or meetings set. Ensure you have a good understanding of exactly what you’re expected to do first and foremost.

Keep yourself organized

Look, no one likes keeping their CRM up to date. It’s a chore that sales reps feel are busywork required by their manager/sales ops but I promise it’s worth it. If you carefully record all conversations you have with your prospects you’re more likely to close the deal — now or in the future. When a prospect tells you that they’ll be making a buying decision in 6 months, chances are you’re going to forget about them. If you use a CRM to remind yourself where they saw value initially, you’ve set yourself up to close that deal. I promise you that your CRM has a better memory than you do.

Ask for referrals

Many new business sales reps close a deal, hand it off to their account manager and move on to the next one. I always make an effort to follow up with the client 2 months after onboarding. First I check to ensure they are seeing value out of what I sold them. If they aren’t, I try to remedy the situation. If they are, I go through their LinkedIn and see which of their connections would benefit from what I’m selling. Then I ask if I can mention them or if the client themselves will make the introduction. I’ve closed countless deals this way.

Track your goals

Numerous studies have found that the more a rep measures their progress toward a goal, the more likely that rep is to achieve it. Want to lose weight? Get a scale in your bathroom, weigh yourself every day, and write it down. The same goals for your quota. If you track your progress every day, you’ll be focused on doing the right things to get there. P.S. this is where QuotaPath comes in handy!

Don’t get lazy

Have you ever been in a sales slump and said “I don’t understand what’s happening! I’m doing the same thing I’ve always done and not getting the same results!” Yeah, me too. Then I listened to my most recent demo vs. an old demo… it’s night and day. I thought I was doing the same things on both demos, but instead I hadn’t done the research on the client. I wasn’t asking closing questions, and I was letting them lead the demo… all the things I know not to do. So I put a post-it on my monitor that said “DON’T BE LAZY”. Every time I saw it, I remembered to do the things that win deals.

ABP: Always be prospecting

Yeah, I stole this from the most hackneyed sales scene of all time. Don’t let it distract from the message. If you’re not trying to add new deals into your pipeline all the time, your pipeline is going to dry up. It’s hard to hit quota with a dry pipeline. Set aside time every day to new opportunity generation. If that means cold calling, pick up the phone. If that means connecting with prospects on LinkedIn, go add them! Additionally LinkedIn prospectors and marketers, can use LinkedHelper software to automate the prospecting and engage with clients on the platform.

Try new things

This might seem a bit contradictory to a previous point about doing the same things on every demo, but it’s not. What I mean is that you need to be constantly experimenting in order to get better. Don’t entirely change your demo or cold call pitch immediately, make small changes slowly. Try calling during lunchtime one day per week to see if it improves your connect rate. Experiment with combining your discovery call and demo into one long call. Try speaking in a different accent! Okay, don’t do that one.

Now that you have a few tips and techniques, get out there and crush your sales quota! Do you need a calculator to help track your quota or commissions? You can use QuotaPath for free.