Do "The Right Thing"​ and do a "GOOD Job"​ doing IT.

Disclaimer: This comments about "bad data" wouldn't necessarily apply to industries/markets with regulated or well defined supply chains. If forecasting can be done with clean, accurate data, it would be foolish not to use it.

It is the time of year where many sales organizations have the clock set back at "zero" and the race is on to achieve 2020 sales targets. As a manager responsible for a team of salespeople, I have also been tasked with creating mutually agreed upon targets for each of my team and my region as a whole.

I have to admit that I tend to struggle with this for a few reasons (including but not limited to):

1.) In many industries (mine is unregulated wholesale floor covering), Accurate market share data is very difficult (or impossible) to obtain. As a result, we have virtually no idea what our current market share is in order to calculate what our potential share could be.

2.) Large (and changing) assortment of products/price points where rapidly changing consumer preference makes benchmarking difficult.

Don't get me wrong, forecasting can be a very valuable tool (especially when inventory/production and personnel planning) but I believe we need to decide how much mental and emotional resources we should allocate to this task, especially when the market data is foggy at best. I was once told by someone who is very good at predictive analysis that forecasting is not about how right you are but more about how "less wrong" you are.

I suggest taking a different tact. By focussing on productive behaviour(s) it is reasonable to think that a salesperson should be able to maximize their "Share on Potential" regardless of what said sales targets are (assuming that the product/service that is being sold hits the right notes of the Marketing Mix (Price, Product, Place & Promotion). This would be a much better indicator of success than blowing an erroneously low sales target out of the water. Or worse, falling way short of a ridiculously high target (think lost bonus & poor moral). You could argue that after a few sales cycles of focusing on behaviour, you would have a better idea of your share on potential. Therefore, you could actually start making better and more accurate forecasts/target (you still have to factor in a lot of market randomness though).

This year, I have decided to further distill and streamline the "Sales Constitution of Behaviour" that my team and I built a couple years ago. Here is is:

Overarching Core Principle: INTEGRITY (we do what we say and we say what we do).

Mechanism to achieve Success: Do "The RIGHT THING" and do a GOOD JOB doing IT.

A pleasant side effect of "do the right thing" is that it makes difficult decisions a lot easier. We all know in our guts what "the right thing" usually is.

That's it, relatively simple but I think effective and the idea can cross the boundary from sales to life in general. Happy Selling!