Have you ever missed your monthly sales goal? If you have, you know the thoughts that go through your head. If you haven’t, congratulations on avoiding it so far!  But here’s the truth: it will happen eventually. When salespeople miss their targets, the biggest mistake they make is abandoning the sales process that made them successful in the first place. Maintaining sales process discipline is always important, but increasingly so after missing quota.

Unless your goals are way too low, there’s a good chance you’ll miss quota at some point. The best planning will help reduce how often you miss, a disciplined approach to prospecting will reduce how often you miss, fishing in the right pool will reduce how often you miss but anyone who tells you that you can go through an entire sales career without missing your goal is delusional. The key is how you react to the miss when it happens., how you improve sales performance after missing quota.

I remember the first time I missed. It was a shock! 

I had always met or exceeded my monthly goal for the past 25 months. Then, out of nowhere, I didn’t. It wasn’t a huge miss, but it was still a miss. It wasn’t a complete surprise to me, something had been off for the last week or so, but it was still jarring.

The next month didn’t start any better, and I started to feel a little panicked or even catastrophising. What was I doing wrong? Did I need to change something? Maybe I wasn’t cut out for this?

Thankfully, I had a manager who noticed the trends early and prioritized my development. We agreed that he would join me on the next day’s sales calls.

The first meeting went well. I asked some great questions, uncovered the clients’ pain points and needs, and left the meeting with a commitment to return the following week to present my solution. This was pretty typical of our sales process – an initial discovery call followed by a second closing meeting. So, I should have been happy, but I still felt something was off.

Before heading to the next meeting, my manager offered a quick and unusual debrief in the car.

So, my manager had this crazy idea. He said he’d give me £10 if I didn’t sell at the next meeting. In fact, he’d even give me the £10 if I didn’t get a second meeting! 

‘That can’t be right,’ I said to him. ‘Do you mean you will give me the £10 if I do sell or get the second meeting?’

‘Nope,’ he said. ‘It’s exactly as I said. Don’t sell, and I’ll give you the £10.’

As I drove to the next meeting, I was confused with my manager’s words going around in my head. 

I had another meeting, though, and like the first one, it went well. I asked some great questions, figured out the clients’ pain points and needs, and left the meeting with a promise to come back the next week to show them my solution.

But this time, it felt different. The questions I asked were answered more openly, and the needs were more clearly defined. The commitment for the next meeting felt like a meeting to agree on the details, not whether we’d do anything at all. Overall, the meeting was more complete and definitely had a better chance of closing than the first one.

The only downside was that I wasn’t going to take the £10 off my manager!

We drove to grab some lunch, and as soon as we sat down, I asked my manager, ‘What just happened? Why did you offer me money not to sell?’

His answer had a big impact on me. He said, ‘Ray, in the first meeting, you were scared, and the customer could tell. You have a great sales process that’s worked wonders for you since you joined us, but you didn’t use it in the first meeting.’

Before I could protest, he listed several areas where I had either changed or missed completely from my tried-and-trusted process. 

So, I had to admit, he was right. The little things I skipped didn’t seem like much, but when you put them all together, it showed the client that I was desperate. I missed my goal last month, and it looked like I was going to do the same this month too. I hadn’t even realized it, but I had a subconscious urge to change.

“Listen, Ray,” my manager said. “I don’t know why you missed your goal last month, and we probably won’t ever know. But sometimes, it just happens. As a result, you stopped following the process you’ve been using successfully for two years. You didn’t review the process or make tweaks, you screwed it up and threw it away.”

“You’re not an aggressive salesperson, and you never will be. 

You’re an interested salesperson. You want to understand what’s going on in your customers’ world, and if there’s a solution, you’ll offer it to them. In your desperation, you became a bit more aggressive, a bit less caring, and more concerned about yourself than the client.”

“In the second meeting, I wanted to take the pressure off you. I wanted you to stop selling and go back to what you do best.”

He was 100% right. I had a process that had worked over and over again, and I had moved away from it with pretty disastrous results. If I hadn’t had my manager’s intervention, I was headed for a total disaster. The old process was brought back, and the success came rushing back.

What really helped was a clear, documented process. It allowed my manager to benchmark me against. It allowed home to call me out, with evidence, when I wasn’t sticking to it. 

Now I’m not saying we should lock down our processes and never change a thing. That’s not how it works. We have to keep testing and tweaking them, because what works today might not work tomorrow. But here’s the thing, we shouldn’t make these changes out of fear or desperation. It is extremely rare that an entire process is wrong or outdated; it probably just needs tweaks.  

Having the discipline, time, and inclination to take a step back is difficult but always worthwhile.

I stayed with that company for another 8 years, and my process went through a number of transformations. However, it only changed when I wanted it to and I could make things better . They were conscious positive changes made in strength, not desperate changes made in weakness.

If you already think your process is 100% perfect, good for you! You should probably start a support group with those I mentioned at the beginning that think they can make it throughout an entire sales career without ever missing a goal. 

If, on the other hand, you are growth-oriented, brave, and humble, then make the time to intentionally review your processes. You’ll be amazed at how much you can improve.

Ray

The Sales Doctor

Consult | Assess | Recommend | Execute

PS: In case you are wondering, the prospect I met at the first meeting decided not to move forward with my recommendations when we met the following week. The second prospect became a long-standing, recurring client.

¹Post by Ray King, 3rd October 2024