Setting SMART sales goals can help sales professionals build a successful sales career and ensure their team meets its targets. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. When setting a goal, it should have all five of these criteria to maximize the chances of achieving them. To make your goals specific, break down what you need to do to reach them. Make sure every step is outlined so that it’s easier for you and your team to take action on them. This means giving yourself a clear target with exact numbers or timelines involved if necessary. Your goal should also be measurable; meaning there should be an amount or percentage attached to it. This could be anything from increasing revenue by 20% or closing 10 new deals per month – whatever makes sense for your particular sales team or job role. Having a metric allows you to track the progress of your goal more easily as well as reassess how feasible it is over time. The third element is ensuring the goal is achievable and realistic, given the available resources. A good way of doing this is by breaking larger goals into smaller milestones that are easier to manage. This way, you can still measure progress without feeling like too much pressure has been put on each task or deadline set out from the start. Relevance ties into whether or not this particular goal will benefit both you and your business in some way. It may not always be possible for one single goal to have equal relevance for both sides but overall, they should all work towards helping achieve something positive either financially or through company growth/development. Finally, every goal should have an end date – otherwise, there's no real urgency behind reaching those targets. You can use this date as motivation while working towards the goal and as a reminder if progress has stalled at any point.