10 Sales objectives to crush your quotas [with examples]

Often, sales teams measure their performances and success by looking at their monthly quotas, average sales value, churn, ROI, and similar metrics.

But what if they don’t know what exactly they are working to achieve?

That’s where the need for having sales objectives comes into play.

And this blog is here to share 10 sales objectives examples you must explore!

But first, let’s know what “sales objectives” means.

What are sales objectives? 

Sales objectives are long-term goals that are set to align the entire sales team towards pushing the company forward.  

They act as a blueprint to define a sales team’ next steps to accomplish individual and departmental sales targets.

But sales objectives are not the same as KPIs.  

They are the overarching themes that define the metrics that depict the success of sales. 

Setting sales goals for driving results out of your reps’ actions is critical.  

Firstly, let’s discover the common challenges that sales professionals face while setting sales objectives. 

Common challenges in setting sales objectives 

The majority of the sales reps spend most of their time on non-revenue-generating activities.  

The high percentage is often due to unrealistic goals, a rise in menial tasks, and other underlying challenges that stop companies from setting frictionless sales objectives. 

Some of the major sales challenges that sales professionals face are:

• Managing volumes of data and segregating them into use cases 
• The inability to manage data and business insights across multiple departments 
• The absence of the company’s long-term or short-term vision 
• Inadequate knowledge in accessing technology or tools to derive real-time insights 
• Measuring success by defining shared metrics 

Sales managers need to define clear sales objectives with a strategy to achieve the desired sales goal.

This way, it would be easier to overcome the majority of challenges coming their way.

So, let’s find the right way to set sales objectives.

How to use sales objectives effectively?  

Most businesses use SMART sales goals to execute sales plans.  

The SMART framework is effective as it covers the main attributes to create actionable sales objectives.

• S – Specific for any task/actions performed by the sales team  
• M – Measurable to assess the success and failure 
• A – Attainable on realistic grounds based on the resources available  
• R – Relevant to align with your business, team, and individual goals 
• T – Time-bound to achieve the particular goal timely which boosts your team’s productivity 

Let’s understand with a sales objective example based on a measurable and time-bound mindset.

Suppose your sales team aims to improve customer retention by 20% over the next year.

The SMART goal will help you define that the team must retain at least 5% of customers quarterly.

10 key sales objectives examples you must use

These 10 sales objectives examples will help you to improve your team’s overall performance. So, let’s dive in. 

1. Increase win rate 

Win rate is a top sales performance metric that refers to the percentage of prospects who became customers divided by the number of pending deals.  

This metric is a clear indicator of the success of your sales funnel because a higher win rate suggests higher revenue. 

Sales objective example:  

Improve win rates by 10% by the end of the following two quarters. 

Tips to achieve this sales objective:  

• Improve your qualification process to get qualified leads for sales 
• Track sales activities of your sales reps over a period to remove bottlenecks
• Leverage sales intelligence to identify bottlenecks and opportunities  
• Set up regular optimization of your sales process 
• Provide sales training proactively for upskilling and reskilling  
• Gather feedback from the sales team and customers to get a complete picture  

2. Reduce customer acquisition costs (CAC) 

You can save more resources for your business expansions by lowering your customer acquisition cost (CAC).

For example, you will have more resources for campaign spending and the tools available to marketing, advertising and sales teams.  

Sales objective example:  

Cut down CAC by 15% in the next quarter by employing other highly skilled, less expensive methods to win customers, such as ensuring the product or service matches the customer’s current situation. 

Tips to achieve this sales objective:  

• Analyze your current customer acquisition cost to discover key channel spends  
• Calculate the ROI from each channel and identify your best sources 
• Identify which channel drives high-quality (sales-worthy) leads  
• Re-evaluate audience targeting and buyer persona to optimize the strategy
• Work on your pricing strategy to improve in the possible way 
• Keep track and use analytics to measure the success   

3. Lower churn rate  

Customer churn rate measures the number of existing customers or subscribers cancelling or not renewing your services.

Also, it indicates how easily offers made by your competitors can sway your audience.

By focusing on this sales objective, you can secure your market capture, optimizing the return on your customer acquisition spend.  

Sales objective example:  

Slash customer churn rate by 10% by the end of the month and achieve this by offering attractive customer incentives or discounts. 

Tips to achieve this sales objective:  

• Deep dive into sales reports to identify the point of drop-off 
• Proactively address customer concerns 
• Conduct closed surveys to seek customer feedback  
• Train your teams effectively to offer better customer service 
• Introduce a Chatbot to assist customers 24/7 
• Offer post sales follow-up and onboarding support 
• Keep a close watch on your competitors  

Related read: 6 Techniques for better customer retention that just work! 

4. Enhance customer lifetime value (CLV) 

Getting more sales from an existing customer is cheaper than acquiring a new one – especially owing to the increasing customer acquisition costs across all channels.  

Therefore, CLV is an important metric for your sales team’s attention.

Sales objective example:  

Increase the average order value and purchase frequency by 10% before the year ends. 

Tips to achieve this sales objective:  

• Segment your customers based on interest, intent, preferences  
• Focus on setting up upsell and cross-sell campaigns with personalized recommendations 
• Offer freebies or free trials to encourage discovery
• Build a community of customers to boost loyalty 
• Boost your customer engagement strategy with automation 
• Run loyalty programs and offer incentives 

5. Improve monthly or annual revenue 

Increased revenue indicates a company’s profitability and competitiveness in the market.  

But no one-size-fits-all method works for generating higher revenue month-on-month or year-over-year.  

This sales objective can involve calculating revenue per sales representative or the entire team. 

Sales objective example:  

Reach our monthly recurring revenue target of 15% more than the previous year. 

Tips to achieve this sales objective:  

• Focus on customer retention to increase recurring revenue  
• Invest in marketing and advertising to attract new customers
• Leverage cold calling and emailing to the fullest  
• Keep a close look on sales pipelines to identify opportunities for more sales 
• Increase purchase size by upselling products or services to active customers 
• Leverage technologies like CRM, marketing automation and analytics to boost revenue-making opportunities
• Train sales team on creating a moment for cross and upselling 

6. Raise profit margins 

If the revenue objective seems harder to execute, raising profit margins is an easier alternative to boost revenue.  

Profit margins are popular profitability indicators representing profits made by selling more units with higher margins.  

Sales objective example:  

Increase profit margins/units sold by 10% through impactful sales calls by the end of the upcoming quarter.  

Tips to achieve this sales objective:  

• Find out what products generate the most profits 
• Upsell and cross-sell products to customers 
• Emphasize the values that your brand offers towards solving their problems 
• Train your reps to overcome sales objections during sales calls

7. Shorten deal closure time/ sales cycle  

A lengthier sales cycle indicates longer time spent closing deals and delayed revenue for your organization.

This can result in prospects exploring more options in the market, resulting in walkaways from deals.

Sales objective example:  

Decrease deal closure time by 20% in the next quarter by pre-qualifying leads and eliminating cold leads early in the sales cycle.  

Tips to achieve this sales objective:  

• Build a lead scoring model to prioritize leads  
• Leverage lead scoring software to automate your qualification process 
• Qualify MQLs for sales with ideal qualifying questions 
• Help your sales team personalize their pitches 
• Set your mundane tasks on autopilot with workflow automation 

8. Enhance the number of high quality leads 

You can only optimize a sales process when you have the right leads in your pipeline.  

If you target too broad, it may bring in prospects that are too far away from making the purchase.

On the other hand, targeting too narrow may reduce the number of leads your sales team can bring into the pipeline, leading to even lesser closure.

The quality of leads is more important than their quantity.

So, your marketing teams must generate and qualify leads effectively, saving their reps time by providing the hottest leads for sales targeting. 

Sales objective example:  

Increase the number of high-quality leads by 25% with lead scoring. 

Tips to achieve this sales objective:  

• Define your ideal customer profile and buyer persona 
• Build a lead scoring model to prioritize leads 
• Introduce an automatic lead scoring tool for faster and error-free lead qualification  
• Set up and follow a sales qualification framework, including all the key qualifying questions  

9. Faster response time  

50% of potential buyers prefer a brand that responds first. 

Customers and leads loathe super long waiting times. Your prospects lose interest in your business if your response rate is low. 

Also, this can adversely impact your brand image in the long run. 

Sales objective example:  

Every sales rep must respond to warm leads and prospects within the three-hour bracket of receiving an inquiry by creating a daily response schedule. 

Tips to achieve this sales objective:   

• Introduce a sales CRM to manage your inbound leads and for faster communication 
• Set for auto-assigning of leads, so all get an instant attention 
• Set up an automated system to give alerts to sales reps when a lead qualifies 
• Automate follow-up with Sales Sequence 
• Conduct training of reps on time management and communication skills 
• Use Mobile CRM as it lets you respond to leads anytime, anywhere 

10. Close more deals 

You must track the number of deals your sales team and individual sales rep closed.

Remember that to achieve this objective, what worked once for you may not fetch the same results again.

So, preparing your reps to win every possible conversation that tends to close the deal would be best.  

Sales objective example:  

Close 20 deals by the end of the first quarter. And individually close three deals by the end of the second quarter using sales best practices. 

Tips to achieve this sales objective:  

• Evaluate the performance across your sales objectives to identify roadblocks 
• Provide sales enablement training to reps for better customer handling 
• Boost your lead generation efforts via omnichannel targeting 
• Improve your lead qualification process to get quality leads 
• Build a custom sales pipeline to track the opportunity of the deal closing 
• Implement a CRM and automation tool to manage and track your entire sales process 

Final thoughts 

Apart from setting actionable sales objectives, ensure you check in on them regularly — weekly or biweekly.

Regular check-ins help your company and teams never lose track or get overwhelmed as new opportunities arise.

Also, celebrate smaller milestones when your sales reps are on the course to accomplish the main objective and keep the momentum going.

As sales leaders, you must guide your team in achieving precise sales goals.

Work towards your best-suited objectives, chase them and measure them to set your teams up for success.