The Ultimate Guide to Crushing Your Next Quota: 51 Things You Can Do Right Now

There are no silver bullets in sales. But there are activities that have a proven impact on your ability to meet quota. The best part is that they’re cumulative -- so the more you do in conjunction with each other, the better your chances of hitting your numbers.

Ready to crush it? Check out 51 things you can do right now that’ll help you climb the leaderboard next month or quarter.

Prospect-Related

1. Send a breakup email to a prospect who hasn’t returned your last several calls and messages.
2. Revisit a deal that ended in no decision. There may have been an organizational change that will allow you to restart the conversation.
3. Ask a current customer for a referral.
4. Reach out to a current customer to see if they’re interested in additional products or services.
5. Research customers you closed more than a year ago to see if any of them have moved to new companies.
6. If you’ve got a high-value target account but the timing isn’t right, send them a physical letter. You may impress them enough to get a call back when their need is more urgent.
7. Attend a networking event.

Social Selling

1. Find and join three or more LinkedIn groups to which qualified buyers belong.
2. Set up Google alerts for your leads.
3. Follow five prospects on Twitter.
4. Optimize your Twitter profile for selling.
5. Subscribe to two new blogs your prospects are reading.
6. Post a relevant piece of content on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and/or Google+.
7. Comment on a post your prospect shared.
8. Reach out to 10 different prospects for their insights on a topic and publish their answers in a blog post.
9. Remove these 10 buzzwords from your LinkedIn profile.
10. Rewrite your LinkedIn summary.
11. Refresh your LinkedIn headline.
12. Use these seven little-known LinkedIn prospecting strategies.

Professional Development and Self-Improvement

1. Schedule a session with your sales manager to work on a specific tactic.
2. Shadow another rep.
3. Watch a sales video.
4. Listen to a sales podcast.
5. Read a sales book.
6. Download summaries of the top sales books.
7. Go to a local meetup for salespeople.
8. Attend a sales conference.
9. Look at your notes from the last training seminar you attended.
10. Review the last five deals you lost (and won) for commonalities.
11. Ask a prospect why they didn’t end up buying from you.
12. Review the 35 most common sales objections and learn how to respond to them.
13. Practice leaving voicemails with another rep.
14. Perform a win/loss analysis of your last deal.
15. Role-play with a team member.
16. Look over your sales script with your manager and make any necessary edits.
17. Reach out to current customers or shadow a customer support rep.
18. Catch up on industry content.
19. Refresh your knowledge of your product (review training materials, internal updates, policy changes, etc.)

General

1. Tap a colleague to help you team sell.
2. Ask a happy customer for a testimonial.
3. Track a new sales trigger event based on the most recent deals you’ve won.
4. Review your templates to find which ones most consistently generate replies.
5. Review your case studies to make sure you’re using the most effective ones.
6. Review your buyer personas.
7. Automate an administrative task so you can spend more time selling.
8. Make a cheat sheet of reasons to disqualify prospects.
9. Set a goal tied to the specific skill or stage of the sales process you’re struggling with.
10. Make sure you’ve got the most up-to-date information on your competition.
11. Plan a social event with your team members. The closer you are, the more likely you are to collaborate.
12. Look for three pieces of content to send to future prospects.
13. Develop an “anti-pitch” for getting a decision maker’s attention.

You won’t exceed quota by pinning all of your hopes on one or two big deals: You’ll exceed it by continuously working throughout the month or quarter. Go out there, and make it happen.