SellingBrew

Insights & Tips

Already a subscriber? Login

Become a subscriber and unlock an information arsenal focused on making your sales operation more effective.

“Who Cares How We Hit the Numbers?”

There are a couple of SellingBrew Playbook subscribers who really seem to enjoy getting me riled up. We’ve worked together in previous lives, so they’ve learned how to push my buttons. And they never miss an opportunity to ask a loaded question, knowing that it will set me off on a rant.

It’s all in good fun, so I won’t name names (Dave and Tom). And besides, on extremely rare occasions they get extraordinarily lucky and one of their smarty-pants questions actually has some instructive value!

Take this one, for example:

“Who cares how we hit the numbers, as long as we hit them?”

Of course, these guys know better and are just trying to get me going. Regardless, it’s a question that many Sales Ops people will have to deal with at some point in their careers. So let’s address it…

Just hitting the revenue targets is a near-term, tactical objective. Hitting those numbers in the right ways, however, is a longer-term, strategic objective.

For example, there’s a massive difference between hitting the numbers by selling large volumes of product to gray-market brokers at steep discounts, and hitting those very same numbers by selling to high-LTV customers in strategic segments at great margins. Achieving the former won’t do much at all for your company in the quarters to come, and may actually harm your future business prospects. In sharp contrast, achieving the latter would lay the foundations for solid business growth and stellar financial performance for decades to come.

Yes, individual salespeople are generally charged with hitting a short-term revenue target. That’s their job. But it’s everyone else’s job to think about the longer term.

If you’re anyone other than an individual salesperson, it’s a big mistake to think that just hitting a revenue target, any which way you can, is all that matters. After all, there are plenty of sales and marketing leaders who’ve exited their companies “for personal reasons” even though they hit their revenue goals each and every quarter like clockwork. Why?

Because they didn’t pay enough attention to the quality of the revenue they were driving. In the interest of hitting a revenue target at all costs, they sold the wrong offerings, to the wrong types of customers, at the wrong margins, etc.

So, don’t kid yourself. It may take a while, but eventually the CEO, the COO, the CFO, the entire Board of Directors, and every major shareholder, will all care very, very deeply about “how” you hit the numbers.

Dave/Tom: Keep ’em coming, boys…I can do this all day long 🙂

Get Immediate Access To Everything In The SellingBrew Playbook

Related Resources

  • Diagnosing Sales Problems

    Failing to identify the true root causes of sales performance problems often leads to a frustrating game of Whack-A-Mole. In this on-demand training webinar, learn how to identify and correct the real root causes behind sales performance issues.

    View This Webinar
  • How to Fight a Price War

    In this on-demand webinar, learn strategies and tactics for preventing a price war, handling "dumb" competitors, de-escalating and avoiding provocative situations, and winning without actually fighting.

    View This Webinar
  • Fooling Yourself About Customer Retention

    In this Expert Interview, Rick Reynolds, the CEO of AskForensics, discusses their latest research and reveals a number of effective strategies for maintaining strong customer relationships and retaining your most valuable accounts.

    View This Interview
  • Inside the New Science of Sales

    Leading teams are using data-science to great effect. But all the esoteric talk and technical jargon can be very confusing. In this session, we boil down the core concepts and processes that matter most.

    View This Webinar