What are your top sales objectives in 2017?

By Zeeva Viola | July 25, 2017

Question:

What are your top sales objectives in 2017?

Answer:

My top sales objective for 2017 is to 3x REVENUE by SCALING the business… so that I can 10x revenue in 2018.

The 3x goal is a forcing function to scale. Revenue growth forces scale – one person can only work so hard for so many hours each week – and scaling enables me to serve more clients and grow revenue.

By building systems that work hard, I can spend the right time in my “Genius Mode” – writing, speaking, teaching, coaching. The more space I allow for Genius Mode, the more value I can add to the clients we serve.

Spending time, energy and focus on non-Genius activities adds mental load and detracts from my ability to deliver my unique talents to the marketplace. To reach Genius Mode, I need to create space through scale so that I can meet my sales objectives.

Revenue and Scale also work in concert with who we serve and why we serve them. We teach our clients how to scale their sales process and rapidly grow their companies, so I need to do the same.

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I think of revenue as a function of four (4) variables:

Revenue = f(Qualified Leads, Conversion Rate, Price, Retention)

1 – Qualified Leads —> Finding & engaging with the right future client – the entrepreneurs and teams that fit my Perfect Prospect Profile. These are people that I want to serve and positively impact.

2 – Conversion Rate —> Educating future clients about where they are today (like, FOR REAL where they are, not where they think they are…) vs where they need to be (i.e. hitting $100k MRR, raising a $5 million round), and the Cost of Inaction if they choose to not to address their sales and growth challenges.

3 – Price —> Creating value. This is simple economics: Price is how we measure the exchange of value. The higher the value created, the higher the price clients are willing to pay.

4 – Retention —> Delivering results. Clients continue as clients because they receive value from our work together.

All four need to run in parallel for my business (or any business) to properly function and grow. This is where most entrepreneurs, or companies in general, fail. They spend a bunch of time prospecting to fill their sales funnel, then they have to convert their pipeline into paying customers, then have to onboard and deliver results to those clients. Meanwhile, the rest of the sales pipeline suffers.

Spending too much time on one area pulls from my focus and energy in other parts of the business.

I can’t spend more time on LinkedIn. Email is burdensome. I can only teach so many webinars each month. I can’t be in two cities at once…

If my days and week are filled with sales calls, that leaves no time to spend on delivering results to our current clients…

If I don’t charge the appropriate price, I’m undervaluing the client experience for both of us…

If I’m delivering results to only today’s clients, I’m not executing on our company vision – that every company with a focused, principled team dedicated to solving important business and social problems will succeed in building, launching and selling their products in their chosen marketplace.

This is why SCALE is critical…

Some evidence that I’m on track to hit my 2017 objective:

My video freelancer is working on case study production this week from client interviews so that my marketing team can post to my website and run Facebook ads.

My SDR is working RIGHT NOW – he just pinged me on Slack – to identify and develop new qualified leads. Yesterday, he kicked off a lead research job to a virtual assistant in the Philippines and he’s training a new assistant to do the work he’s doing today so that he can start the next round of lead development work.

30 minute ago, I had a sales call with a lead generated directly from this work.

I wrapped up this morning’s weekly client Sales Acceleration Call at 8:03am. My Customer Success Manager already organized the call recording, notes and resources for our clients to review on our Facebook Group.

She’s also on-boarded our newest client, and posted resources and templates to the new client for a sales presentation they have later today. Then, she sent me recommendations on how we can improve our on-boarding process. Later today, she’ll run our “Daily Client Sweep” to make sure every client has exactly what they need right now to grow their sales.

All of this is happening because I DON’T HAVE TO DO IT. This is evidence of scale – my self-imposed forcing function. Just six months ago, none of this was possible. Now I’m in a coffee shop writing, working in Genius Mode.

Through June, I’m at 244% revenue vs last year, with my three-month average revenue increasing each month. The ONLY obstacle holding me back is mindset and the systems I put into place.

The forcing function is working, and why I set my 2017 sales objective to 3x REVENUE by SCALING the business.

Onwards to 10x in 2018!

**This Q&A article was originally posted on Quora. Check out Scott’s Quora page here.