A new year is upon us! That most wonderful time of the year when sales teams do their performance evaluations and set goals for the year ahead and identify professional development opportunities.

What will 2023 hold for your sales team? Here are some ideas of ways you can approach your team’s sales goals and sales performance in the new year, and things you can implement to up your game.

How to Approach Setting Your 2023 Sales Goals

When you look back at this year and conduct your 2023 performance review for your sales reps, what will you see? What metrics will you have used to set their goals? Revenue is the most common one, and it’s an important one. But there are others you can consider.

Monitor Metrics

First, when setting your sales goals for the year, give them some teeth—quantify them with specific numbers. Then monitor those sales metrics through the year. A sales metric, also known as a KPI (key performance indicator), is a data point that represents a sales rep’s performance. There are many kinds of metrics and they’re helpful to factor in when setting sales goals for the future.

Studies have shown that having a measurable goal helps you perform better than without. Do any research on setting sales goals and you’ll probably come across the acronym SMART. Here’s what it stands for.

Specific

Measurable

Attainable

Relevant

Time-bound

The more precise and fleshed-out you can get with your sales goals, the more motivated you’ll be, accountable you’ll feel, and driven you’ll be since the results are measurable. A vague goal, like simply saying you want to make more money this year, or close more sales, is a goal that won’t likely be meaningful or compelling enough to yield results. Get as specific with your sales goals as you can.

But Which Metrics to Monitor?

As mentioned, total revenue can be a great metric to consider when writing your goals for the sales year ahead. But there are other facets to consider too when charting the course for a sales year that’s successful in more ways than one.

Here are some other metrics or ways to quantify sales effectiveness or ability to close, to consider when writing your sales goals for a new year:

• Average revenue per account, product, or customer
• Market penetration
• Percentage of revenue from new vs. existing customers
• Win rate (also known as opportunity-to-win ratio)
• Year-over-year growth
• Quota attainment
• Outreach attempts
• Interactions per day
• Contacts per day
• Opportunities created
• Proposals
• Conversion percentage
• Average order value/size
• Cost per sale
• Length of sales cycle
• Retention percentage
• Number of sales activities per rep
• Number of sales activities per dollar generated
• Types of sales activities being performed (i.e., phone calls, emails, in-person meetings scheduled, social media engagements, proposals/quotes sent)
• Leads created
• Pipeline added
• Marketing collateral utilization by sales reps

Rather than just shooting for a certain revenue figure when setting your sales goals for the new year, think through whether setting your sights on a certain number in one of these other categories might be more relevant or motivational for you.

Sales Coaching

How do you upskill in the new year to meet the challenge of the sales goals you set for yourself? Making sure your reps are getting a steady diet of effective sales coaching is one surefire way. Finding a quality sales coach to connect with the reps that need it most can be a great way to help reps meet their sales goals and to improve in the new year generally.

But you need data-driven insights to make the sales coaching effective. So, make a new year’s resolution to yourself to make it a priority to track sales data this year. Select the metrics that are most relevant to your organization to follow through the year and to base your sales goals on. And just how exactly do you track such data points? By using a CRM.

Implement something like SalesForce, HubSpot, Microsoft Dynamics, or Map My Customers. Once you have a data-driven idea of the sales coaching that’s needed, check out these sales coaching templates.

Think Outside the Box with New Year Sales Goal Setting

So, this year, when conducting your 2023 performance review, be sure to set sales goals for your reps. They’re motivational and they orient your sales performance in the new year. But don’t set arbitrary goals or goals better suited for a different type of rep or another organization. Think about what statistics, data points, and therefore goals will be most relevant and set you up for success.  And perhaps think beyond just setting your goal based on revenue. Think through whether setting your sights on something like length of sales cycle, leads created, or marketing collateral used by reps might make for more effective sales coaching, development opportunities, and goal setting in the new year.