The New Year is upon us! Its time to implement goals you have set for your sales achievements for the year.

Well, I haven’t set SMART goals for my business yet. So I sill use this blog post as an opportunity to do so. Lets start with what I have achieved last year:

• sold 11 Accounts for total annual recurring revenue of $15,289,366.48 ($393,340 in margin / profit)
• Made $28679 in up front commissions, added $821 in monthly recurring residual commissions.
• Sources of my sold accounts were: 4 company leads, 1 cold call, 5 clients adding or restructuring, and 1 internal partnership.
• Total opportunities were: 65 prospects / discovery meetings, 33 RFPs (51% conversion rate), 11 sold (17% conversion from prospect, 33% conversion from RFP). I am happy with these stats as they are much higher than company averages (38% discovery to RFP, 13% conversion from prospect, and 33% conversion from RFP).

I fell way short of my goals that I set for myself this time last year. However, I aimed so high, I still exceeded 100% of my quota and am on pace to finish in the top 15% of our sales force and earning our annual incentive trip. My goals were 120 prospects (met 54% of goal), 60 RFPs (55% of goal), 20 deals (55% of goal), 150k in commissions (25% of goal). So to analyze all of this, I was dead on in my expectations of conversion stats EXCEPT for the most important metric, $ in my pocket. If a couple of deals went the right way, The commission $ would have rose significantly, and probably would have been the right ratio.

There are several reasons for falling short. I tried something completely new and outside the box and I was super excited about it. I started a podcast where I could interview my ideal clients and approach them with value rather than a sales pitch. I was able to secure and complete 13 interviews in 2 months. There will be more info on this in future posts, as I want to teach you how you can do this as well. However, Corporate marketing asked me to shut it down, and I only published 4 episodes. It was very disheartening. In fact, it made me want to quit. I actually entered the interview process for 12 different companies, received 2 offers, but ultimately decided to stay the course. Nonetheless, I can affirm that having a foot out the door does not result in extraordinary results. You have to be all in.

Now to plan next year. I’m going to set the same goals which when achieved will double my results: 120 discoveries (10 per month), 60 RFPs (5 per month), 20 deals (5 per quarter), and 150k in commissions. So how am I going to double my activity? I’m going to really step up my marketing. I’m going to implement several 5minutesalesfunnels, I’m going to blog on LinkedIn weekly, I’m going to implement cold email automation sequences, I’m going to rebrand and relaunch my podcast, I’m going to meet with at least 4 potential referral partners per month, I’m going to start an industry related blog, I’m going to incorporate video on Youtube, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram, and I’m going ensure I keep prospecting a priority. Most importantly, I’m going to keep my head in the game (unless of course I find the ultimate next step in my career!)

What about you? How did your year wrap up and what are you going to do next year?

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