Managing leadership expectations can be difficult in the modern world. Virtually every sales rep will have “sales expectations” to live up to. In other words, they’ll need to prove that they’re performing according to the needs of the business, closing the right number of deals, and working efficiently.
As the landscape grows more competitive, many sales leaders struggle to set the right expectations for their teams. While it’s important to push professionals towards their full potential, unrealistic expectations can have a negative impact on employee engagement and performance levels.
This means sales managers and reps both have a role to play in ensuring the right performance targets are met. Leaders need to become experts at setting and managing expectations, and sales reps need to ensure they have a strategy in place for living up to those targets.
Setting Sales Expectations: The Basics
While many sales leaders have lofty goals for sales performance, coaching and motivating a high-performing team requires managers to take a practical approach to sales expectations. Knowing how to set the right expectations is an essential leadership skill that shouldn’t be overlooked.
Employees can only deliver according to the requests of their managers if those requests are clearly explained, reasonable, and realistic. This means business leaders need to take a careful approach to guiding their sales teams. Every sales goal set by a leader, whether for performance, conduct, or development, needs to be implemented with the right best practices.
In particular, when setting sales expectations, business leaders need to:
- Communicate early and often: Clarity is essential to ensure any sales rep can perform at their best. Before any sales cycle begins, each team member should have a clear view of how their performance will be measured and how they can boost their chances of success. Leaving the lines of communication open, so teams can ask about their sales targets, is helpful too.
- Understand their teams: Different sales reps have different skills, weaknesses, strengths and abilities. In some cases, different territories will perform better than others due to reasons that have nothing to do with the quality of the teams. Setting expectations with these concepts in mind will ensure every goal set for your team is reasonable and realistic.
- Keep expectations simple: Great sales leaders avoid overwhelming employees with complexity. Make it easy for your team members to understand what they need to achieve. For instance, should they be aiming to improve their close rate by a certain percentage, or increase sales by a certain amount compared to the previous year?
- Provide useful insights: Ensure teams have the data they need to track their own performance. Dashboards and gamified scoreboards could be extremely useful for this. They not only keep team members focused on the same goals, but they can also increase levels of motivation and engagement in the business.
- Monitor and adjust: The goals of your sales process may change over time, based on the evolving performance of your teams. Ensuring you’re ready to adapt expectations, eliminate bottlenecks, and simplify processes will have a direct impact on your team’s performance.
Sales Forecast Vs Pipeline: How Data Affects Expectations
In most sales environments, sales expectations are set based on research and data. To ensure they’re setting the right goals for their teams, leaders often use a combination of sales forecasting methods, as well as a managed sales pipeline, to track and streamline performance.
A sales pipeline gives sales professionals the ability to effectively manage the progression of sales opportunities from initial interaction through to closing the deal. The right sales pipeline management strategy provides an up-to-date insight into how teams are performing, and assists leaders in adjusting expectations and maintaining realistic goals.
Alternatively, sales forecasting helps to ensure leaders can align performance goals with overall business objectives. Accurate forecasts help business leaders to evaluate how much of a product or service they can expect their teams to sell, based on historical data.
Forecast-based sales expectations are often more realistic and reasonable than lofty sales goals set without data. However, it’s important to invest in an accurate sales forecast, to prevent discrepancies in market demand and other factors from leading to problematic goals.
In the world of sales expectations, sales pipeline management, and forecasting often go hand-in-hand. An accurate pipeline provides the foundation for a more powerful forecast.
Managing Leadership Expectations
While sales leaders play an important role in ensuring consistent sales performance, by offering coaching support and setting clear expectations, team members have their own role to play. Managing leadership expectations in the sales environment means each individual sales rep needs to:
- Clarify instructions: Assumptions are poison to sales performance. It’s common for employees to make assumptions in a fast-paced business environment which can lead to process issues and mistakes. Each team member should feel comfortable asking for clarity and guidance when they’re unsure what their goals should be.
- Communicate: One of the best methods of managing leadership expectations involves engaging in regular communication. Teams and leaders that communicate clearly and regularly are less likely to encounter misunderstandings. Team leaders should check in with staff members regularly, and team members should ask questions, provide feedback, and share any issues they might be having along the way.
- Collaborate: Team members can be involved in the process of setting sales expectations, and they often should be. Leaders who speak to their employees about their expectations, and ask about their concerns in advance are more likely to have engaged, high-performing teams.
Managing sales expectations in an evolving business is a process that requires the input and dedication of both sales leaders and their teams. Together, business leaders can work with employees to help them reach crucial goals, with the right motivation and guidance.
Learn more about how you can support your team in reaching loftier sales expectations, with gamified courses from HSE today.
