The 'Income Action Plan' For Sales Professionals
Jan 18, 2022People don't get into to sales just to earn an income. People get into sales to create an income that they get to control, with the intention of earning more money than they would working somewhere else.
When I hire a new sales professional at Stupar Enterprises, I like to sit down with them and learn more about their personal income goals so I can do my best to show them how to hit their goals.
Salespeople often set large, ambitious income goals that can quickly become too large to approach in a measurable, realistic and attainable way. Without proper leadership or simple math, sales reps often give up on meeting or exceeding their own goals and voluntarily exchange the pursuit of their goals with the pursuit of doing the bare minimum. If leadership is absent all together throughout the organization and the sales rep is held accountable to only producing what is necessary for them to keep their job, things can get ugly real quick.
The best sales reps don't care about hitting their company's call metrics and impressing their managers, they care about hitting their income goals. This usually means that the sales rep is going to have exceed what the company expects of them and produce at a level higher than what is expected of them.
And that is the beauty of creating an Income Action Plan for salespeople.
Each Sales Experience Manager at Stupar Enterprises is required to make a minimum of 135 outbound calls per day and/or exceed a minimum of 3 hours of total talk time. As the owner of the company, I know that any rep that meets these daily requirements will produce a profitable result for my business and earn a reasonable income that they can live off of.
However, my job as a leader isn't to hold my salespeople accountable to hitting my minimum requirements. My job is to help my salespeople realize their own potential and provide them with the tools, resources and training to do it.
So, the first thing I do is reverse-engineer my salespeople's big, juicy, annual income goals into small, attainable, bite-sized daily activities. This allows me to hold my team accountable to hitting their daily metics instead of holding them accountable to my daily metrics.
In the Income Action Plan below, I'm going to show you how you could make $250,000 in a year while having some work/life balance (calculating 260 working days, allowing you to take off every weekend and enjoy each national holiday).
Ready to do some math? Here's an example:
How much do I want to earn this year?: $250,000
How much is your average commission per sale?: $1,250
Number of sales required to hit your annual income goal: 200 sales
What is your current closing ratio?: 25%
Number of presentations needed to close 200 sales this year: 800 presentations
What is your appointment-show rate?: 50%
Number of appointments needed to schedule 800 presentations: 1,600
How many calls does it take to schedule 1 appointment?: 30 calls
Number of calls needed to schedule 1,600 appointments: 48,000
Now remember, we're going to spread those 48,000 phone calls out over 260 total 'working days'.
48,000 calls / 260 working days = 184.6 calls per day
According to the math in this example, all you would have to do in order to make $250,000 in a year is pick up the phone 185 times each day you go to work. This also takes into account that you get to enjoy your weekends and each national holiday, giving you plenty of time to enjoy your income.
If you're really smart, you'll be able to identify areas within 'the math' where your skills can improve the most, so you can prioritize your training and skill development. You may find it less time consuming to improve your closing ratio to 50% and cut the total number of dials needed to close 200 deals in half. It's up to you!
Looking to boost sales? Contact Stupar Enterprises today and find out why 15,000+ sales professionals and hundreds of companies rely on us to implement more effective sales strategies in today's modern selling environment.
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