How do you develop quarterly/annual sales OKRs and tie those to individual projects?

We develop quarterly and annual sales OKRs every year. We've done V2Moms that were due in January by every employee. We've made it a requirement to post them publicly inside our Slack profiles so everyone in the company has visibility into your V2Moms as well. I recommend exporting your work calendar from last year and mapping what you did with your time and what was accomplished. This way you don't start from scratch. 

Here is my approach to aligning quarterly/annual sales OKRs with broader business objections:

• Define business objections: Identify the key regional business objectives for the quarter or year. They should be specific, measurable, achievable, and time-bound. For example, increasing central enterprise region revenue by 20% in the next 180 days.

• Determine sales objectives: Based on business objectives, establish sales-specific objectives that support broader goals and are tied to revenue targets. For example, increasing Stage 1 conversions by 20% within the next 90 days.

• Assign projects: Assign specific projects to members of the sales team based on their skills, expertise, and areas of responsibility.

• Align individual OKRs: Connect individual projects to sales team OKRs by setting individual key results that contribute to overall sales objectives.

• Success Criteria: Clearly define the success criteria for each individual project and how they contribute to the overall sales objectives.

Re-evaluating KPIs on a regular basis is a healthy practice for your company. Just because it worked this year, doesn't mean those same motions will work next. For instance, in year's past, you may have been okay working with a Business Head to justify budget. Nowadays, CFO's are scrutinizing expenses more than ever, expecting to see the R in ROI. If you are not involving them early, your success rate is likely suffering.

You'll want to evaluate the attributes making up your wins vs the deals you lose, before determining what to use moving forward. It could be access to power, Executive alignment, departments involved, breadth of solution to differentiate from competition, on-sites delivered, problems you're solving, or length of sales cycle. Identify your trends and set those as your targets. Then make sure you have a simply process to track the data and hold your sellers accountable.

Quarterly and annual OKR's on an individual level need to be broken down from the Company/Segment/Team Level. Once the overall priorities are defined you can identify the contribution on the individual level.

I would say to define projects based on the gaps you are seeing and cascade them down to the individual level. Ultimately, the sales goal will be defined by the revenue goal broken down by segment and product. The expected growth rate will determine the priorities.

Will the growth come from productivity increase per rep or by headcount growth?

Do you have a Total addressable market (TAM) constraint? If yes, how can you increase that?

Once those types of questions are answered the goal will be to monitor progress based on KPIs. Most importantly, Revenue, Pipeline and Activities (the order matters!)

If Revenue and pipeline is in good order activities become less of an issue. If not, activities need to be looked at to build enough pipeline to reach revenue targets!

Effectively breaking down the quarterly/annual sales goals across all levels within the sales org is the most effective way to get buy in. Be transparent about the role each person will play in helping the team reach the overall goal and emphasize the significance of their contribution and how it impacts the bigger picture.