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An important step in developing yourself as a new salesperson is to establish goals the you can aspire to achieve. While it is possible your company has minimum requirements, most often referred to as sales quota, I personally believe that telling a salesperson he must achieve a given corporate quota can often be an exercise in futility if the salesperson cannot find a way to internalize the quota as one he wants to achieve for his own benefit. It is not enough to simply say he is required to sell his quota. What are the consequences of failure? You’ll fire him?

As you no doubt know, there are at least three forms of motivation: fear, money, and recognition. I don’t think fear works to motivate salespeople. It might for assembly line workers, but in sales, I believe the only motivators that produce lasting results are the remaining two, money and recognition.

So with that in mind I’ve learned that it is imperative to convert corporate goal requirement into goals I want. If I can accomplish that, it will more often result in the achievement of the company’s goals.

Next it is important that you follow a guide, a blueprint, if you will, that guides you toward your goal and, as importantly, gives you a tool to measure your progress toward your personal goal. Professional salespeople should know what they must accomplish every day to insure success. If you are new to your company, ask your manager to help you develop the road map to achieving sales success. If you achieve you both win.

To develop the daily action plan you have to ask yourself a few questions.

How much is the average commission earned per sale in my company?

If you can determine the answer, how much money on average should I earn per sale in my first year working for the company?

Using that average, divide the average commission per sale into the target income goal I would like to earn the first year.

It is usually unreasonable to expect brand new salesperson to sell as much the first month he starts with the company. Sales should build every month as his prospecting begins to produce results, and as he learns how to best demonstrate and sell the company’s product. To that end, you will need to spread the sales needed to achieve the annual goal on an escalating basis, with fewer sales expected in the earlier months, and more each month until the average or better is reached.

Determine how many presentations, on average, existing salespeople make in order to close one sale, and then try to determine an average for new salespeople, if possible. If the average is one sale out of four presentations, then simple math tells you that you must do one of two things in the first month. You must either make sixteen presentations to close four sales, or you must make somewhere between twelve to sixteen presentations and achieve a higher-than-average closing ratio. I’d pick sixteen presentations as the goal. Worst case scenario then is you sell more than expected—not a bad thing.

Ask yourself what a salesperson has to do on a daily, hourly basis to secure enough appointments to make sixteen presentations the first month. The quickest way for a new salesperson to get started is cold-calling? I made cold calls on businesses when I sold cash registers, chemicals, and security systems. To me, cold-calling was the fastest way to secure opportunities to present my product. No doubt it is harder work and requires that the salesperson have a thick skin to be able to handle the rejection inherent in this method, but the results, in my estimation, greatly outweigh the pain of rejection.

How about using bird dogs to secure leads? Bird dogs are an excellent way to generate leads in the security business. How about referrals from existing customers your company already does business with? Do you often make sales as a result of referrals? What about personal direct mail? Determines, with management guidance, residences and businesses that are more likely to purchase your product, and then send personal direct mail to those prospects to arrange for an opportunity to present the product. Can leads be developed that way?

Does the company provide any leads? If so, how many on average can you plug into the calculation? Not to belabor the point here (I’ll cover how to develop leads in another chapter), part of the action planner has to include the daily activity needed in order for you to develop enough leads to make sixteen presentations, which will result in four closed sales, which will result in achieving the goal.

If you do all of these calculations, and put them on a spreadsheet for the first year with an escalating number of presentations and sales, resulting in the achievement of the goal, you can then plan the achievement of your desired income goal. Remember, this is your goal—to help you make enough sales in order for you to drive your new car next year, if that is what you want.

An example of what that road map/action planner could look like follows.