What to Do When You Miss Your Sales Goals

For more than 20 years, I’ve coached business owners and their leadership teams to achieve their goals and see tangible results. Not hitting sales goals is a very common issue. While frustrating and disappointing, these setbacks can provide valuable insights. Using those insights and your EOS Tools, you’ll know what to do when you miss your sales goals.

Reflecting on Missed Goals

There’s no doubt about it – missing your sales goals doesn’t feel good. However, focusing on the negative and beating yourself up doesn’t help. 

It’s unproductive and unhealthy and can even cause learned helplessness among your team, leading to more failure. EOS® gives your team the space and tools to meet and discuss how and why you fell short. 

To begin the improvement process, evaluate your sales situation objectively. Here are some tips on how to do just that:

1. Dig into the Data

Dive deep into your sales data, metrics, and customer feedback to comprehensively understand what went wrong. Identify areas where your sales performance fell short and pinpoint any external factors that might have influenced the outcomes.

2. Reflect and Learn

Honest reflection is key to understanding the factors that led to missed sales goals. Review your sales processes, your strategies, and the effectiveness of your sales team. Consider whether any internal or external challenges affected your performance. Engage in open and transparent communication with your team to gather insights and feedback.

3. Identify Improvement Areas

With a clear understanding of the challenges, identify the specific areas for improvement. These improvements could involve refining the sales strategy, enhancing the client’s sales team, or optimizing processes to overcome bottlenecks.

By collaboratively identifying improvement areas, your team can align their efforts toward the business’s shared vision and goals.

4. Document Any New/Updated Processes

With your team aligned on vision and goals, think about any processes you need to update or put into place to ensure consistency in delivery. By using the 3-Step Process Documenter™, you can identify, document, and package the processes that lead to success. 

Remember: The past is the past. We learn from it, then let it go. The rest is about the future.

Leveraging EOS Tools for Success

EOS offers a powerful set of tools to help you analyze and holistically improve your business. Here’s a list of some of the best ones to revisit to help improve sales performance:

• Vision/Traction Organizer® (V/TO)

Revisit and refine your business’s vision, long-term goals, and sales targets in your V/TO®. Clarify your ideal customer profile and develop a compelling strategy to reach your sales goals.

And don’t forget your marketing! More specifically, review the four parts of your marketing strategy: Target Market, 3 Uniques™, Proven Process, and Guarantee.

Get the team 100% aligned on these, then communicate it to everyone. You want everyone to know exactly who to send to you and what messages to use to attract customers.

• The Accountability Chart™

Review your organizational structure and ensure you have the right people in the right seats. Clarify roles, responsibilities, and performance expectations for each team member.

Does 100% of your sales team GWC™ (Get it, Want it, have the Capacity to do it)? Once they’re in the right seat, you’ll see exponential improvement.

• Scorecard

With the right Scorecard metrics, you can proactively anticipate problems within your business before they actually happen. To do this, you want to focus your measurables on leading indicators so you have time to adjust if things start to go off track.

Use your Scorecard to focus on your goals right now and ensure everyone knows their numbers and is working toward hitting them.

Once you establish the perfect Scorecard for your team, you’ll be able to answer big questions like:

• • Is your sales team focused on the right activities to produce your desired results?
  • Do they generate enough leads?
  • Are they creating enough demand?
  • Are they converting enough opportunities into orders?

• Level 10 Meeting™

Take advantage of the face-to-face time with your leadership team during your weekly Level 10 Meeting.

Go deeper and get to the root of which of your measurables are off track? Some topics that might come up include:

• • Do you have a disconnect between what is being sold to your customers and the product that is being produced and delivered?
  • Does the marketing and sales team need additional resources, collateral, or support to be successful?

Conclusion

As part of a business Running on EOS™, you and your team have the power to identify the reasons behind missed sales goals and implement effective strategies for improvement.

Remember, you want progress over perfection. Even if you follow all these tips, it’s not guaranteed that you’ll hit your goal next quarter, but keep with it. As long as you see a positive change and you’re making progress, you’re moving in the right direction to hit your goals.