It’s that time of year again, time to start thinking about what you were hoping to accomplish in 2014 and whether or not you were able to get it done.  We’re talking about your sales and marketing goals of course.  Whether it was a website refresh, embracing inbound , a new CRM or finally getting a handle on marketing automation, now is the time to reflect on your goals and where you’re going to land.  The real question to answer, of course, is whether or not you’re going to hit your sales numbers and if not, what went wrong.

We’re all busy, that goes without being said, but this is really something you have to sit down and figure out, not hitting again next year usually isn’t an option.  So, where do you start?

Well, let’s determine how close you’re going to be to the goal.  Then start to ask yourself some questions. Were your goals realistic for the year? Did your marketing team have other priorities they needed to focus on this year?  Was your sales team focused on closing the right deals? Did you have the right resources in place to hit those goals?   Were your lead generation tactics effective? Once you’ve figured that out, you can start to determine where the problems are stemming from.

When we meet with clients that want to grow their revenue, they often times know how much they want to grow, but really have no idea where to start.  If you’ve determined the percent increase in growth, then you have the starting point.  You may even know where you want it to come from.  What we find you may not know are the stats behind how you got to the numbers this year and how to track down those stats.  You may know how much revenue came from new versus existing clients, but do you know how long it took to close that revenue?  Is it a short sell cycle or long one?  What is your average deal size for a new versus an existing client?  Where did the initial lead come from?  Was it an inbound lead?  Outbound lead?  A referral from a partner?  How many leads are you getting per month?  How many of those leads are marketing qualified?  How many are sales qualified? Are these all items you’re tracking somewhere?  Hopefully you’re tracking all of this in your CRM so you can do the analysis needed.

The good news is you have time yet this year to assess things and make recommended changes for 2015.  Frantz Group offers a marketing assessment that will give you a roadmap for successful marketing strategy and planning.   What are you waiting for?