How to set sales targets for your sales people ?

Setting sales target for sales people is a difficult job because every single person working in your sales team does not have similar abilities and strengths to handle the sales target or work under pressure. Being the team lead or supervisor it is your responsibility to be aware of the abilities of every single person in your sales team. Depending on these abilities you can even ask everyone about how much they can sell easily. In addition to this, when you are asking your sales team to set their own targets then you can offer them with some incentive as well in case of achievement. On the other hand if you set targets by yourself then if is necessary to look into the past sales, depending on your past sales you can set sales target easily.

In order to set sales target you must have the following information:

• Funnel size and Market potential
• Win Rate
• Opportunity stage to convert into order

Please note always give a stretch target as market is too competitive and in order to have 100% performance from sales team they must look for a 140% 

Use the average figure to influence your sales targets and the best-case to set bonuses. Solicit feedback. Once you set revenue targets and individual sales goals for reps, it is important that you solicit their feedback.

Be specific when setting targets for sales staff - break your requirements down into different areas, for example:

• New sales - work from the projections in your business plan and sales forecasts - these will take into account changing market and economic conditions.
• Renewals - selling isn't only about new business - it's also about retaining your existing customers. A typical renewals rate is in the region of 60 to 70 per cent.
• Lapsed customers - a good salesperson should be able to recover some of your past customers who have not bought from you for some time.

To set your Sales target, you must develop your system of approach, by determining the following components as follows;

1.  Review your performances from previous, check if these performances are acceptable, within standard. or totally below margin, unacceptable or very poor.

2.  There are two kinds of sales target  (a.) Management Mandated Sales Target  (b.) Projected Target set by the sales Head/Team. which ever of these 2 targets you need to decide or to follow will set the direction your team will undertake.

3.  Review your manpower compliment, support group system, marketing tools and budget requirements

then make a strategic plan base on your resources, directives, manpower etc etc.

4.  when all  aspects are taken and calculated into the equation and bench marks are determined, you may begin to set your new goals and target.

5.  create plan of actions, measuring tools to evaluate progress in a given time frame or fiscal year of production.

Please remember that these are just outline and will need to be detailed and expanded to tailor fit your operation and product line. 

But basically, if you follow these basics in target setting ( complimented by the other suggestions of the experts above) you will be able to put your sales team on track.  Good luck and happy selling !!!

thanks for the invitation .

It must be put marketing goals for a period of 3 years: including the outline of the sales, market shares, the gains that the company should be realized within a certain period of time. These goals must be realistic and measurable.

You need to set clear targets for your salespeople, linked to incentives such as commissions and bonuses - this motivates them and provides a clear indication of the kind of performance expected of them.

This process is crucial to the success of your business and needs to be closely tied in with the rest of your business strategy and planning.

Be specific when setting targets for sales staff - break your requirements down into different areas, for example:

New sales - work from the projections in your business plan and sales forecasts - these will take into account changing market and economic conditions.

Renewals - selling isn't only about new business - it's also about retaining your existing customers. A typical renewals rate is in the region of 60 to 70 per cent.

Lapsed customers - a good salesperson should be able to recover some of your past customers who have not bought from you for some time.

Look at your business and identify the factors driving its profitability - you should use these to drive your sales targets too. Different businesses may require very different targets. For instance, winning 200 new customers in a year might be a poor performance for a supplier of low-margin foodstuffs, whereas recruiting just two new customers might be a very good performance for a manufacturer of luxury yachts.

Make sure that the targets you set for your new sales staff are reasonable for the territory they've been allocated. Making things too easy may lead to complacency and lost sales, while making them too difficult can be demotivating and lead to despondency.

I agree with the rest answer .

Thanks for invitation ,

Sales Target assigning to sales team  based on following :

• General target , in other word (Monthly target - Yearly target ).
• Region capacity .
• Type of product ( FMCG , Industrial tools, Consumer Product).
• How many ( team , branch , channel ) we have.
• We will depend on Indirect sales only or Direct sales can assist us in this mission.
• Type of competition.

Then after we answering these question , we start to put our (weekly-Monthly) target and assign sub target for every SR and sales channel and direct the supervisor to follow up their channels and SRs to ensure the implementing and assigned target hitting .

by KPI

how many customer he have

his power and area

his historical sales

his tools

agreed with the answer of  Vinod Jetley