Gone are the days when marketers were just responsible for the creativity of campaigns, we are now more responsible than ever for their effectiveness. In general this is a good thing, but in some company’s marketers have almost become as responsible for hitting the sales target as the sales team. If not checked this can become a noose around our necks that stifle’s real marketing and ingenuity.

Maybe the reason your business isn’t hitting the sales target is because it’s too focused on it:

Too much pressure impedes sound judgement and creativity

Ever noticed that when you’re under intense pressure you struggle to think straight? Your memory of past successes from which to draw from evades you, and ideas that would normally flow to you freely seem out of reach?

This is not just you it’s your brain at work, stress stage one is normal, this is our alert state that keeps us focused and conscious, we are often in this state when we find our ‘flow’.

Stress stages two and three however have the opposite effect, normal stress gone wrong.

It’s important to have a goal like a sales target which provides a healthy amount of pressure, but a relentless focus on sales targets can take you into an abnormal level of stress which is counterproductive. Hindering your ability to reach the goal.

For more on this topic I recommend two books:

• Switch on Your Brain: The Key to Peak Happiness, Thinking, and Health
• Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention

You can’t put the sales target and the customer first

Either the customer is first or the sales target is first, they can’t both be first.

You’ve heard it a million times; a relentless focus on providing value to customers is the route to sustainable profitability. The irony is putting a customer focus before a sales focus will increase your chances of reaching the sales target.

Besides, your customers can read your business mentality clearer than your words, and if your focus is on the sales target they can tell a mile off, and more often than not they’ll run to the competition.

Influence precedes sales

There is a direct correlation between sales and influence, the more influence you have the more you sell. When all you’re focused on is hitting the sales target there is an increased tendency to oversell, which diminishes influence.

When businesses are relentlessly focused on sales they try and rush the relationship process by doing things like offering huge discounts and sending mass emails to broadcast lists. It’s a bit like this;

This type of activity has limited results at best and yet businesses continue to do it, expecting a different result. In any other context that would be considered madness.

Influence takes time but it does eventually open flood gates, this is exactly how content marketing works.

My point is this; I’m all for sales targets and marketing having some accountability for the numbers. However, it’s important that this doesn’t impede the marketers ability develop and implement strong marketing strategies that are focused on more than the immediate sales goals.