Case Study

Intro

STRATEGIC GOAL SETTING

 Janice has been running her company for seven years now and when it comes to goal setting she thought she had obtained some pretty good ones. Her company was performing well and was producing over 2 million a year in revenue with only eight employees.

Her struggle now was helping her team create and achieve goals for the company on their own. Although she was a successful goal getter herself,  she had no idea how to teach others how to do it.

 She loved the S.M.A.R.T. approach she learned in her Sharpen the Spear coaching session but was not completely sure on how to expand on it in real and understandable terms to produce an outcome. Janice wanted to focus on sales goals first and foremost because that’s what fuels the economic engine to her business.

 Knowing that a GOAL, as opposed to a KPI, is a one time occurrence, Janice was confused on how to create an objective goal that would increase the close rates from 51% to 61% and keep it there. The other part of that goal is discovering why people say no to their offers. She also needed the sales team to know why it needs to be done and why it will work.

It took some work but Janice finally settled on this for an objective goal…

“Increase our current sales close rate from 51% to 61% and gather data as to why people say “no” to our offer over the next 60 days”. 

After an estimate has been delivered and we have not received a confirmation of acceptance after two days, John will do a follow up call with the client asking these three questions: Did you have any unanswered questions regarding the estimate I can clear up for you? Are you still interested in doing the project? Is there a specific reason you’re not moving forward at this time? (enter all answers into CRM) 

The more we know about why people say no the easier it is to correct and turn those no’s into yeses. By simply following up (more than 3 calls to connect)  on delivered estimates we should see a 10% increase in sales since 90% of all sales happen on the fourth and later follow up call.

By reaching the 61% close rate not only will John’s commissions increase by volume there will also be a $1,000 bonus for the increase in sales and the collected questions data. 

As you can see 1. We have what the goal is 2. How long it should take 3. Who is achieving goal 4. What they are doing to achieve the goal. 5. How they gather the info and close more sales  6. Where they collect/enter the data 7. Compensation for achieving a goal. 8. Knowing why the goal will be effective.

After Janice completed writing out the sales goal she took it to the sales team to get feedback and verification this is a reasonable time frame to achieve this goal. The goal was met with enthusiasm due to its specificity and reward for achieving it. The sales team said they’ve never seen a goal so detailed yet so simple and understandable.

Janice also knew that when this goal is achieved that the new closing rate of 61% will be able to stay at 61% and not just be for the goal period. She saw it as a true triple win. John wins for achieving the goal making both increased commission and a $1000 bonus, the company wins with increased revenue and the ability to serve more people, and because of the diligence of the sales team, a customer gets to experience an incredible product they may have otherwise missed due to lack of follow up from the company’s end.

Janice continued to write a list of vitally important goals and created a goal writing template. Her people can now write, follow and achieve goals the same way. This system began working consistently at all levels of the business. The burden of writing and managing goals was now lifted from Janice and spread out among the teams. This also built in its own accountability standards which inspired everyone to perform at higher levels.

With her teams empowered to achieve more, Janice now could focus on bigger challenges in the business only she is able to address.