Let’s say you’ve made a personal decision that you want to hit a big number in sales—whether that’s revenue, deals, or commission. For the purposes of this article, the specific deadline you’ve set for attaining your goal doesn’t matter. The point is, we’re assuming that you’re emotionally invested in making a certain big, aggressive number a reality in your world within a certain timeframe.
You probably already know that it’s not going to be enough to just write down the goal (or accept a goal that someone else has set for you), sit back, and hope it happens. That definitely doesn’t work.
So what does?
THE ART OF REVERSE ENGINEERING
Our experience is that the most successful sellers learn to reverse-engineer the goals that truly matter to them … which is where the success habit I call the 5% Rule comes in.
Let’s say your long-term goal is to grow your book of business by 25% this year. Great. Now let me ask:
What, specifically, that you're doing right now, are you going to be doing more of this week and the next week, and in the weeks that follow ... so as to move the needle?
How much more of that will you be doing?
How is your behavior/activity going to be different than it was in the past?
And finally, how much of that new behavior/activity will you be doing?
If any of your answers to these questions is vague— “I'll be making more calls,” “I'll be doing a better job of staying motivated”—then we’ve got some work to do.
Here’s how the 5% Rule works: You take that big, shiny goal and break it down into bite-sized wins. Crunch the numbers until the target goal becomes an activity that you can translate to a five-percent increase in a specific monthly behavior that correlates with the metric you want to improve. If you can consistently improve your execution numbers by that five percent margin each month, you’ll not only hit your annual goal—you’ll likely overshoot it. The reason this works is simple: It’s doable.
I’ll give you a straightforward, simplified example. Suppose you closed twelve deals last year. This year, you want to close fifteen deals. Bear with me as I walk you through the math. Relax – this will be painless.
Let’s say you’re about to come into January. And let's also say it now takes you thirty voice-to-voice conversations with VPs of Operations to generate a single deal. That means your monthly goal will be to move that behavior up to thirty-two voice-to-voice conversations in January, not thirty – because thirty-two is roughly a hundred and five percent of thirty. When in doubt, you round up. That’s part of the magic here.
So. You do that. Thirty-two conversations in January. You celebrate! By the way, it's extremely important to celebrate the behaviors; celebrating the results is important, too, of course, but that comes later.
February rolls around. Your goal now is to move the previous month’s behavior up to thirty-four for the month. Again, you’re rounding up to whole numbers; the goal is always to hit at least a hundred and five percent of the previous month’s activity. And on it goes, month by month. You’re strengthening the performance muscle, five percent at a time.
Guess what? By the time you hit your twelfth month, December, you’ll be up to 52 voice-to-voice conversations for the month … and you will have taken part in 484 conversations with VPs of Operations for the year as a whole. More to the point, you will have closed sixteen deals by focusing on steadily improving this one critical, revenue-driving metric – exceeding your goal of fifteen deals.
As you can see, there’s a lot of power in five percent! If you run regularly, the odds are you're already quite familiar with the principle I'm sharing here. Yes, you may have the goal of running ten miles, but if the longest you've ever run is five miles, you don't just hit the street and push yourself to attain that goal right away. You'd exhaust yourself and perhaps burn out. Instead, you pick smaller intermediate “stretch numbers” -- six, seven, eight, nine – and you work your way up to your goal of ten miles. It's the same idea here.
GET RELIGION!
Let me emphasize: this method only works if you track the numbers religiously. Yes, that means daily scorecards, weekly reviews, monthly recaps. Most reps I meet don’t track their behavior. And when you don’t track behavior, you drift. You start mistaking activity for progress. Don’t fall into that trap.
Yes, what I’m outlining takes a little preparation time, and probably some discussions with your manager. But it’s probably the best time investment you’ll make all year. Once you do put in the minimal amount of effort necessary to identify and monitor the right metric … watch out! This is a recipe for a major revenue breakthrough.
Don’t get lost in vanity metrics. Focus on authentic lead indicators—the things you control that you know correlate to revenue: outreach, appointments set, discussions held, follow-ups done, post-call debriefs with your manager. (Yes, that’s a metric that correlates to revenue.) These are leading indicators, and leading indicators are where the 5% Rule starts. Over time, the lagging indicators (revenue, closed deals) take care of themselves.
THE ACHEIVABILITY FACTOR
The beauty of committing to a five-percent monthly improvement in behaviors is that this commitment is achievable. It’s small enough to tackle, but big enough to matter.
When you hit five percent growth each month, you build momentum. You get sharper and you feel more focused. You start looking at your job, your career, and your organization proactively.
Another reason this works is that it gives you an opportunity to celebrate the five-percent wins once you do achieve them. Too many salespeople only celebrate the end-of-quarter blowouts. That’s like only celebrating the Super Bowl and ignoring every first down. If you hit your behavior target this month, ring the bell. Buy yourself a coffee. Text your manager. Whatever it takes. Reinforce the habit!
DON’T BE LIKE MOST SALESPEOPLE
Guess what? Most salespeople won’t do this. They’ll set their 20% goal in January, forget about it by March, and panic in Q4. Meanwhile, the reps who live by the 5% Rule are building equity every month -- quietly, steadily, without drama. If you’re looking for a way to set yourself apart from the pack… you’ve just found it.
Let me leave you with this: Big goals are only real when they show up in small behaviors.
If your calendar, your CRM, and your scorecard don’t reflect your goals, then you don’t have a goal—you have a wish. So make the 5% Rule your religion. Stack those wins. And watch how fast your "someday" becomes your right now.
