It’s Only 4 Months to Christmas……

They say as you get older time passes quicker every year – and how true that is.  It feels as though yesterday it was New Year‘s Day and the whole of 2013 was laid out in front of us, full of opportunity.

But how time flies – it’s now just 4 months to Christmas and that means year end too! Are you on target to hit your year-end sales target? Perhaps a better question is how have you performed against your target so far this year?

At a recent workshop we were talking about this very subject – only 1 in 5 had done a sales forecast and worst still only half of them had reviewed it since they wrote it! So I asked how many were on target, with a bit of um and ahhing most said that they thought they were. ‘Thought’ was the key word, they didn’t really know.

So, here are 6 things you can do now to make sure that you hit the target:

1. Find out what you have achieved so far this year? You need to know the numbers; they could be income, average order value, no. of orders, % of repeat business

2. Reset you target for year end and make it specific – yes it’s good to be aiming at £500,000 of income but that’s not enough – you need to drive activity to make sure that you hit the target. How many orders do you need, at what price, how many customers but and how often? How do these numbers stack up against your target?

3. Work out where you need to concentrate your efforts to hit target. Is it more new customers, increasing average order value, more repeat purchase, or perhaps selling more add-ons?

4. What do you need to achieve to get you on target? More enquiries, more quotes, more closed deals, new clients, etc.

5. What opportunities do you have coming up? For example, are there any key buying dates or periods for you; an exhibition or trade show, a holiday period, a new product launch etc. that could have a major impact on your sales?

6. Do you have the capacity to handle an increase in sales? If you are targeting (or need) a higher level of sales than you have already handled, do you need more resource? It would be such a shame to drive good sales and then not be able to fulfil them.

As the boss the most important thing on your agenda is hitting the sales target so make sure that you and your team are concentrating all day and every day on the activities that will drive and secure sales.