One Page Plan (How I Stay Motivated In Sales)

Look, everyone’s felt unmotivated at work at one time or another. But salespeople in particular struggle with a lack of motivation the most. And if you’re not motivated to sell, you’re not motivated to earn.

“By a massive long shot, salespeople’s biggest pain point is motivation.” – Will Barron’s Interview with HubSpot’s Kim Walsh timestamp [30:00]

Which is why today we’re covering the best motivation system I’ve found to keep me going—selling by the numbers—breaking down your yearly goals into smaller monthly, weekly, and daily goals.

How It Boosts Motivation

How does selling by the numbers boost motivation in the first place? Well, there are actually four reasons why this approach to sales works so well.

1. One Path to Success

First, it’s a single path to success. Compared to the “winging it” approach, selling by the numbers gives you clear, weekly (and even daily) goals so you can quickly know when you’re winning and when you’re falling behind. Achieve those goals, and you’re making progress. Simple as that.

2. Easy to Communicate

Two, it’s easy to communicate to your management. When you’ve clearly defined your goals, it’s easier to get your supervisors behind a plan. And with their support, your 10X more likely to stay on track.

3. Forces You to Decide What You Want

Third, selling by the numbers forces you to decide what you want. This framework moves backward, so you’re defining what your goals are right at the start. And as long as you’re following the plan each day, you can rest assured you’re continually working towards those goals that actually matter.

4. Walk Away Power

And four, selling by the numbers lets you walk away from bad leads if you want. With this framework, you can easily refer to your plan, see if you need that buyer to hit your numbers, and if not, walk away from all the trouble.

And that is something every sales rep would love to do.

The Selling By the Numbers Framework

Alright so the question is, how does the Selling By the Numbers Framework work? Essentially, this five-step framework starts from the end and moves backward to define how to reach your goals.

1. Define Your Wants

Defining your wants.

What do you want your life to look like in 5, 10, 20 years? What do you need to achieve that?

Now don’t go straight for the income figure. Because money in and of itself isn’t a want. It’s a means to an end. And we’re going to be dealing with it specifically in the next step.

Instead, a want is something like being able to send your kid to college. It’s that shiny new Corvette. It’s that safety net to keep your family safe during an emergency.

Get it?

So step one, determine your want. And then…

2. Set Your Income Goal

Step two, set your income goal to achieve that want. How much extra dough do you need to earn to be able to afford that want?

Now for tangible goods you can buy right now like that new car, that’s easy. You know the price. But for wants that you don’t need fulfilled right away, you’ll have to work out a savings plan.

For example, say you want to be able to send your kid to college in 15 years. Tuition is around $225,000 so that breaks down to an extra $15K saved per year. Make sense?

3. Determine Your Starting Point

Determining your starting point. This one’s simple, where are you now compared to your income goal?

All you have to do here is take what you’ve earned already and subtract it from the final goal. Then you need to take into account the givens for this year. Do you have recurring revenue from certain accounts? Are you losing any long-time customers? What kinds of sure-things are out there this year?

Take it all in when determining where you’re at now. The more accurate you are at this stage, the easier it’ll be to achieve your income goals on schedule.

4. Establish Your Waypoints

Step four is where the magic starts to happen. Because this is when you start creating quarterly, monthly, weekly, and even daily goals.

Let’s say we’re aiming for the extra $15K per year to afford our kid’s college. What we’ll do here is go backwards from that. If the average commission of a closed deal is $1,000, that means you need to close an additional 15 deals each year.

Now it’s time to look at your close rates on each step leading up to a sale. How many proposals turn into a sale? How many demos into proposals? And so on and so on.

So breaking that all down, your data may look something like this:

• Sales target = $15,000
• Average dollar value of closed deals = $1,000
• Closed deals = 15
• Proposals given = 30
• Demos scheduled = 60
• Discovery calls scheduled = 120
• Decision makers spoken to = 480
• Calls made = 2400

So if you make an extra 2400 calls this year, you’re on your way to earning that extra $15K. Now with that info in hand, it’s time to break these numbers down into quarterly, monthly, weekly, and daily goals. Which would look like this…

And voila! You now have the ultra-specific goals you need to complete each day to achieve your final want.

5. Create Your One-Page Plan

Creating your one-page plan.

This one-page plan summarizes it all: your want, your income goal, your starting point, and your quantitative waypoints you need to achieve—and it’s all on one single sheet you can look at every day.

If we’re sticking with the extra $15K example from before, your one-page plan will look something like this:

My One-Page Plan

Want: To have enough money saved up over 15 years to pay for Molly’s tuition in full. 

Income Goal: $150,000 per year

Starting Point: $130,000 + $5,000 recurring yearly revenue (additional $15,000 per year needed)

My Waypoints:

All that’s left is sticking that one-page plan somewhere you’ll see it every day. I put mine right next to my monitor so I remember to stay focused all day long.

And that, my friends, is how you keep up your motivation by selling by the numbers.