The race to drive sales that thrive in 2025.
There is nothing quite like a new year to get us really revved up to set new goals. Just ask the people in the treadmill queue at the gym. Every. Single. January. Whether it’s setting your sights on a victory on your scale, or trying to scale up your sales victories, there is no time like Jan to plan.
It is, however, often a little daunting to know where to start. Especially when the 365 days of blank pages in your new leather bound 2025 diary stare back at you somewhat accusingly.
Related: The ultimate guide to creating a winning B2B sales strategy
Get your mind ready first
As many fortune cookies profess, a journey of a thousand steps starts with just one. No one has ever won a race from the starting blocks. So, how does one take that initial step? For the love of metaphors and our queuing treadmill friends – let’s liken planning our sales targets to running a marathon.
As anyone in sales knows, the sales game is a marathon, not a sprint.
Much like marathon running, and most things goal-oriented, the best way to start is with the end in mind (thanks Franklin Covey). So, what does that mean for us? Well, it means we take our first step with our sights on the end goal. This ensures our first steps – and subsequent decisions – are all moving in the right direction.
The “get set” part of “On your marks, get set, go!” is very important.
You’re in the starting blocks, at your mark. How do you get set? You prepare your mind. Call it visualisation, call it preparation, call it whatever you like, but knowing where you want to go is a surefire way to make sure you get there.
Imagine running a race without knowing how far it is, or where the finish line is. Exhausting? Yes. Pointless? Yes. Busywork? Yes. Do you want that? No.
So, if you are ready to start, get yourself a finish line, and get set.
Aim for the finish
In both sales and running, we want to plan our first step in a way that will ensure we reach our final one. Whether that is stretching or cold calling, the finish line is what helps you tie your shoelaces on those wintery mornings, or what gets you out of bed after a week of sales rejections.
So, what’s your finish line? No, seriously, I want you to think about it for a minute. What do you want the end of this year to look like for you? Stop reading for a second. Pause, and picture it.
- Get a clear picture of it in your mind. Make it clearer.
- Now feel how that accomplishment will make you feel.
- Next, memorise it, write it down, stick it up on your fridge, change your screensaver, do whatever you have to do to remind yourself every day, with every email, every interaction, every cent spent along the way, why you started this race in the first place.
Then, step toward it consciously and progressively each day.
It‘s equally helpful to turn rejection into redirection. Just because a runner stumbles during a race, doesn’t mean the finish line moves. Or that the race is over. So, when you don’t close that sale, instead of looking down at where you stumbled, it’s a helpful guide to look up at where you are going. Cliché but effective.
The steps in between
Sales is a numbers game. So should your goal setting be. Quantify your finish line, so you can quantify your progress. A marathon is quantified. What I mean by this is that it has allocated times, preset distances, certain qualifying criteria and categories, etc.
When we have set measurements, we set ourselves up to succeed.
So, what does that mean for sales? Let’s say you want to double your sales in 2025. Big goal.
That either means you need to double your efforts:
- call more people,
- make more customer visits,
- widen your geographical area.
Or you need to double your efficiency:
- automate admin,
- automate stock prices and inventory level updates,
- digitalise your product catalogue,
- automate sales analytics and call reports, etc.
Related: The best apps for sales reps
And you can try these different levers to success along the way.
Essentially, you need to ask yourself, “What do double yearly sales look like on a quarterly basis, monthly basis, and all the way to daily actions?” If doubling sales requires double efforts, that means you need to send twice as many emails, reach twice as many people, and likely burn out twice as fast.
Or, you can work smarter not harder by implementing the best sales tech for sales reps and managers to help you do this.
Remember to take water breaks
Hydrate and recalibrate as needed. Set check-in points along the way to see how far you are, to see how far you have to go. Once we start, it’s difficult to stop if we don’t know how to.
Consciously set points of reflection along the way to ensure you are on the right track. If you are running a marathon but you miss the 10km mark, you are likely not to pace yourself correctly and could fail to finish. Schedule these mini-strategy realignment sessions in your diary. And make sure they happen, so that you always prioritise progress over motion.
So, all in all, sales is a race. It involves training, preparation, hydration. Heck, even perspiration. But if you plan correctly now, by the end you will be winner.
