The Ultimate Sales Gap Plan: How To Make Sure You Reach Your Quota

If you are in a sales team, hitting your sales quota might be the most stressful yet rewarding part of your job. Your sales goal helps you keep track and measure your company’s current state and future path.

But sometimes, even if you aspire to be the best sales rep you can be, you can find yourself falling short. This can be due to several reasons. Maybe your products aren’t selling as well as you’d hoped, or you’re not getting enough leads. Whatever the case, finding the root cause is the first step. After you evaluate everything, you can explore options to bridge the gap.

If you’re not diligent, you could find yourself dealing with unsatisfied stakeholders, and you'll need to start building customer relationships from the ground up. But don't worry. There is a way out.

Top sales leaders always have a gap plan. This strategy can help you close the gap between your current state and the desired future state you need to be in to hit your sales quota. There are a few different ways to create a gap plan, but the most important thing is to ensure that it’s tailored to your specific situation and organizational habits.

With that in mind, let’s look at five strategies for creating an effective gap plan.

Sales Gap Analysis: How to Create an Effective Gap Plan

Here at Cirrus Insight, we are always looking for ways to streamline your day as a salesperson. That's why we have prepared these tips to help you identify gaps in your sales organization. We know that dealing with any type of performance gap is no easy feat, and we want to allocate resources throughout our Resource Center to help you get a complete picture so that you can develop your own strategies to bridge and close gaps and help your sales reps.

1. Sales Performance Analysis: Understand the factors that impact your ability to hit your quota

The first step in creating an effective gap plan is understanding the factors impacting your current performance and ability to hit your monthly quota. It could be anything from a change in the market to a problem with your sales process.

The cost of living has risen dramatically, forcing consumers to cut back on their spending. For example, the average monthly cost of living in Canada for a family now exceeds $4,000, while in the United States, it exceeds $5,000.

With these numbers in mind, it’s easy to blame current economic conditions as the sole factor for why your sales are going down, but there may be other problems that lie within your own sales methodologies. 

For example, let’s assume that you offer a seasonal product or service, such as water slides for kids. Your sales could be greatly slowed down just because the weather is changing. In the fall or winter seasons, people are less likely to buy a water slide because they can’t use it as often. However, in the spring or summer, when the weather is nice, people are more likely to go for something like that.

This is something you can easily forecast. If you know that the weather is going to impact your sales, you need to account for that in your gap plan. That way, you can strategize and create a game plan to close this gap and streamline your sales.

As another example, let's say you’re a financial services-based business. In such a case, it’s important to ensure ultimate customer satisfaction at all times.

For example, according to a recent survey, 43% of small business owners rely entirely on online banks for their business banking needs. But if your company doesn’t offer online banking services, you’re missing out on a big chunk of your target market. 

No matter your industry, research and understand the specific pain points of your target market. That way, you can adjust your offerings accordingly, appeal to their needs, and improve performance metrics across the board.

2. Set the right pace to ensure long-term profitability

Making a pacing plan to help hit your sales quota and ensure revenue growth may not be what you wanted to hear, but it’s good advice. The point of the plan is to ensure that your performance is steady month-to-month. That way, you look forward to making progress over time.

It’s not in anyone’s best interest to have months where they excel and others where they underperform, just to sometimes meet their quota. This type of inconsistency makes it difficult to predict results and ultimately puts unnecessary stress on the company and its employees.

One of the most important sales techniques is to set the right pace from the start. This means having a plan that will help you gradually increase your monthly sales and operations. Pacing yourself will also help to ensure that you don’t burn out. Trying to make up for lost ground by working longer hours is not sustainable and will only lead to more problems down the road.

Your pacing plan should be easy to create. Take the number of qualified opportunities you need every month and divide by the number of weeks. For example, if you require 40 qualified opportunities and only have four weeks available, you’ll need to convert at least 10 leads each week.

3. Problem-Solving Tactics: Focus on high-value activities

When trying to close the gap between your current state and the ideal state, you must focus on high-value activities. These are activities that will have the biggest impact on your ability to reach your goals.

Business owners often waste time on frivolous tasks that don’t actually help them stay on top. They’re just crossing off low-level tasks that give them a false sense of accomplishment. This doesn't help anyone. You cannot manage customer relationships that way. You need to focus on the activities that are actually going to get results.

For example, if you’re selling products online, a high-value activity would be optimizing your website for conversions. This means making sure that your website is designed to encourage people to buy your products. That's an excellent way to reach your sales targets and help the team achieve their goals.

Don’t waste your time on things that aren’t going to move the needle. If you need help determining what those things are, both professionally and personally, we are building a playlist on YouTube with the best resources to guide you through the process.

4. Bridge the Sales Gap: Analyzing your ROI

The goal is to make more money than you spend. So, when you’re thinking about ways to close the gap, always think about what will have the biggest impact on your bottom line.

According to HubSpot, 80% of sales managers require their reps to make 5 follow-up calls, but a whopping 44% give up after just one follow-up call. It’s vital to ensure that you and your team leave no stone unturned. There’s a reason 75% of companies say converting leads into customers is their top priority. Follow up on leads and concentrate on sealing the deal!

5. Analyze sales data and measure your progress

To hit your sales quota, you need to have a way to measure your progress, and this includes setting up metrics and KPIs that will allow you to track your performance against your goal.

Some examples of metrics you could track include:

• The number of leads you generate each week
• The number of conversions you make each week
• The average value of each sale
• Your closing rate
• Your win rate

These are just some examples, but the key is to find the metrics most important to your business and track them regularly. Doing so will give you the data you need to see how you’re performing and make necessary adjustments.

Final thoughts

Modern sales tactics are tough to master, but when you do, closing deals will come easily to you. By following the gap analysis templates we shared above, you’ll have no trouble achieving your goals. Remember, it’s all about pacing yourself, focusing on high-value activities, and measuring your progress. If you can do these things, you’ll be well on your way to success.

If you really want to improve your sales skills, you need to focus on proper sales training. Sales enablement is all about giving your sales reps the option to use the right data sources and learn how to push the right product features to the right customer. Here at Cirrus Insight, we have excellent resources that will help you improve customer relationship management metrics across the board. We also have a few tips on the best sales software you can use.

Explore our Resource Center to learn more.