Have you clearly set the direction for your sales team for 2024?
If an operations team didn't plan out their week with which jobs they would do, the steps they would follow, and what equipment they would need, it would be a disaster. They'd scramble, make mistakes, and frustrate clients and the other team members.
We wouldn't think to run our production teams this way, but some companies are putting their sales teams into this exact position. As leaders, we must give our sales team direction on how we want them to spend their time if we want them to be successful in 2024. A considerable part of this comes from the budgeting and goal-setting process.
As you're setting goals for 2024, I want you to do these things to make it easier for your sales team to execute and succeed:
1. Have Goals
Sales teams need goals: they need to know where the goalposts are so that they can meet or exceed expectations, and so they clearly understand what the production team is ready to execute.
2. Break the Goals Down by Category
Your sales team should know how much revenue they need to generate in each category they sell in. This is especially important if your production capacity is mismatched - if you can take on more landscaping-only jobs but your hardscaping crews are at capacity, your design-build salespeople need to know that.
Don't believe this isn't true if a salesperson is only selling maintenance work: you still need to be clear about what maintenance work they should be selling. For example, these are the metrics we watch and have specific goals for within maintenance sales at Grunder Landscaping Co.:
- Snow and ice removal: square footage under contract
- Lawn care: square footage under contract
- Commercial landscape maintenance: revenue
- Residential landscape maintenance: revenue
- Enhancements: revenue
3. Make it Clear What a Week Should Look Like
We break our sales goals down for our team so they know how much they need to sell weekly to stay on track. In addition to that, we set our sales meetings up to be an effective way to drive results, create positive accountability, and identify coaching opportunities or ways we can help our team close the sales in their pipeline.
Chris Psencik and I will lay out how teams can implement these things and more during Virtual Sales Bootcamp 2.0 later this week. You do not need to take our original Virtual Sales Bootcamp first; this event will set sales teams up for success in 2024. I hope to see you online!
Marty Grunder
Founder & CEO
The Grow Group & Grunder Landscaping Co.
P.S. Can't Join us Live? The recordings will be sent out to all registrants after the event ends and will be available until January 15, 2024.