SMART goals for sales: 10 examples, and how to turn a yearly number into this week's calls

SMART is a checklist for writing a goal you can actually check. Each letter is one test:

• Specific: it names what you'll do or win. "More sales" fails. "Ten new retainer clients" passes.
• Measurable: there's a number, and you can pull it from your log without arguing about it.
• Achievable: it's a stretch on last year, but not a fantasy. If you've never booked more than 5 meetings a week, 20 is a wish.
• Relevant: hitting it moves the number that matters to you or the business.
• Time-bound: it has a date, and ideally a date to check it before the deadline.

Most sales goals already have a number and a date. Where they fall down is the gap between the number and what you do on a Tuesday. A yearly revenue target is measurable, but it doesn't tell you who to call this morning. That's why a good goal set usually has two kinds.

Outcome goals are the results: revenue, deals signed, new clients. They're what you're paid on, but you don't fully control them. A buyer can delay, a big deal can slip into next quarter.

Activity goals are what you do: calls, meetings, proposals, referral asks. You control these completely. If you hit them week after week and the outcome still misses, you know the problem is in how the calls go, and you can work on that.

You want both. Set the outcome goal for the year, then work backwards to the activity goals for each week.

For reps:

1. Make 40 calls to new prospects every week this quarter, logged by Friday at 5pm.
2. Book 5 first meetings a week from 1 January to 31 March.
3. Sign 12 new clients by 30 June, and keep at least 36 open deals in the pipeline while doing it so the second half doesn't start from zero.
4. Improve my call-to-meeting rate from 1 in 12 to 1 in 10 by the end of March, measured over each four-week block.
5. Put a date on every follow-up before I hang up, and have zero overdue follow-ups on Friday afternoons for the whole quarter.
6. Ask for one referral in every client review meeting from February to April.

For managers:

1. Hold a 30-minute 1:1 with every rep every week this quarter, with the week's logged numbers on the table.
2. Get every rep to 4 weeks in a row of hitting their weekly call goal by 31 March.
3. Get the team to 150 first meetings this quarter, and review the running total every Monday against the pace the quarter needs.
4. Bring new reps to their first signed deal within 60 days of their start date.

Goals 1, 2, 5, 6, 7 and 8 are activity goals. Goals 3, 9 and 10 are outcome goals. Goal 4 sits in between: it measures how well the calls go, which is the skill behind the outcome.

Don't set all ten. A rep needs one outcome goal for the year and two or three weekly activity goals. More than that and nobody remembers them by February.

Here's the part most goal-setting guides skip. You work backwards from the yearly number one step at a time, and each step uses one of your own conversion rates from last year.

If you don't know your own rates yet, use last quarter's, or a teammate's as a start, and correct them after a month. The sales activity calculator does this maths for you. For managers setting targets across a team, the quota calculator works from the team number down.

Rounding up matters. A plan that needs every week to go perfectly will fall behind in the first week someone is ill.

A yearly goal checked in December is a report on what already happened. Checked every Friday, it's something you can still steer.

The Friday check takes five minutes:

1. Compare this week's calls and meetings to the weekly goal.
2. Look at the running total for the year against where you should be by now.
3. If you're behind, work out what next week needs to catch up, and whether that's realistic.
4. Put the answer into next week's calendar as call blocks.

By the end of March, you'll have about 12 weeks of numbers. That's enough to see whether your conversion rates match the plan. If Priya is making her 35 calls but booking 2 meetings instead of 4, the call count isn't the problem, and the call itself is where to look. If she's booking 4 meetings but they're not turning into deals, it's the meeting.

When the year goes off track, the weekly maths tells you which step to fix, and a month of wasted guessing goes away. A sales plan template is a good place to keep the numbers and your notes each week.

• Setting only the revenue number. Without weekly activity goals, the first sign of trouble shows up months too late.
• Copying last year's number plus a round amount, without checking whether the activity to get there fits in the week.
• Using someone else's conversion rates forever, when they were only ever meant to get you through the first month.
• Changing the goal every time a week goes badly. Change next week's plan instead and leave the goal where it is.
• Setting goals nobody checks. A goal without a weekly check is a wish with a deadline.