Brief One: Are Your Goals Really Goals?

Appropriate goals are the driving force behind successful organizations. Successful organizations have taken the time to diligently develop realistic, attainable goals that provide legitimate focus for the organization. The goals are not just words on paper.

Goals should be a part of a formalized, written strategic plan. The strategic plan is your road map...the strategic planning process determines what you market, where you market it, how you market it, and, more simply, how you are going to allocate precious money and people resources.

Goals should have the following characteristics:

• They are attainable.
• They require hard work to achieve.
• They are easily understood.
• They reflect critical aspects of the organization.
• They support the overall mission or purpose of the organization.
• They are consistent with the organization's capabilities and resources.

Goals are the jumping off point, so to speak, for developing specific objectives, strategies and tactics. The combination of goals, objectives, strategies and tactics form the strategic plan.

Your people should be well aware of and focused on the organization's goals. Without this focus, your people are never sure where the company is headed and, therefore, cannot fully embrace the importance of the various decisions being made.

Ask yourself and your employees these questions when you sense that impending decisions might be drifting away from the direction provided by your goals; What are our goals? Does this decision help us achieve one or more of those goals?

Make sure that your goals are not really strategies in disguise. This example illustrates the difference between goals, objectives and strategies for a company looking to grow through diversification:

Goal: Achieve profitable diversification of the company.

Objective: Have in place one new division by 12/31/99.

Strategy: Diversify through acquisition as opposed to product development.

This example clearly shows one of the key areas of focus for the company; diversification. And it shows how they intend to achieve this goal; by acquiring another company. This goal and its supporting objective(s) and strategy(s) clearly communicates to interested parties that at least part of the company's growth will come through diversification by acquisition.

Look at your comany's goals. Are they clear, concise and meaningful? Do they provide real focus? If you achieve each of your goals, will your company be successful or more successful than it is today? Do your people know what the goals are and are the goals ingrained into the culture? Have you limited the number of goals to somewhere between 3 and 7 since too many goals will confuse and muddy the focus and too few might not provide enough focus.

If your company doesn't have a sound strategic plan in place, you are living dangerously. Without one your organization is like a rudderless ship. Today's business climate is much too competitive to not have a well constructed strategic plan.

Successful, high performing companies, large and small, have a long-range plan and they live it and breath it. Their focus is on that plan and on their goals.

Brief Two: Think Before You Grow

Virtually every organization wants to grow and get stronger. And a business should strive to grow in a controlled, profitable manner. But, what happens when a business tries to grow outside its core business or core "competency" or grow beyond its ability to manage the organization?

If a business is fundamentally sound and well managed, the opportunity for growth outside of its core business is better than if there are significant problems. Companies often attempt to grow by diversifying into marginally related or unrelated businesses and then end up divesting themselves of those business units after a short period of time. But why? It can be for a variety of reasons, but most often the reason stems from simply not understanding the new line of business. What made the company successful in its core business was probably a good understanding of the products or services, the market(s), the competition and the nuances of the industry. Transferring that knowledge into a marginally related or unrelated business is not very often an advantage. In fact, it can be a decided disadvantage because the tendency is to do business a lot like it has always been done. In the new business unit, it's likely that things are accomplished in a different manner.

And the mere fact that resources are being drawn toward the new business and away from the core business can have a negative impact on the core business unit. This is particularly true if management personnel are expected to divide their attention among several different businesses. The focus and discipline that is so important to being successful in a single business is compromised by adding the new line of business.

The other scenario that we often witness is the company that is poorly managed or that has some other significant fundamental problem(s), but tries to grow its way out of trouble either through diversification or through expansion of its existing business. In this scenario the business is already struggling to some extent due to poor fundamental management. Then the company adds fuel to the fire by stretching resources beyond their capacity and capability. If a management team is struggling with managing the existing business in its current state, why would management or ownership want to take on more? Unless the company is a dinosaur operating in a dinosaur industry, this is an excellent question.

What makes more sense is to closely analyze what the company does well and what it does poorly. Then address those things the company does poorly and develop a plan for strengthening them. Until the core business unit works through the fundamental management issues, it rarely makes any sense to try to grow either through expansion of the existing business or especially through diversification.

Before making a conscious effort to expand, ask yourself if you and the rest of the company are ready for it. Be objective and take your ego out of the assessment. Your ego will tend to drive you to wanting to expand so it is important to be honest with yourself about the motives for wanting to take on any sort of expansion. Once ego is neutralized, inventory those problem areas and prioritize them in terms of what needs to be addressed first. Then develop a plan for attacking each of the issues or problem areas and start the plan in motion. Until the fundamental problems are corrected, think twice about expanding or diversifying.

Brief Three: Sales and Wasting Time

The way that sales people utilize their time is critical to their success. Many sales people are simply ineffective time managers. Every minute of every day is essential to a sales person. Sales managers need to stress the importance of time and help their sales people understand how wasted time translates into lost sales.

Let's look at an example to clarify our point. Suppose the average face-to-face call lasts 15 minutes. And the average travel time between accounts is 30 minutes. We'll use an 8 hour day even though we believe an 8 hour day falls far short of acceptable in the sales game. Let's assume that on this day the full 8 hours is devoted to either travel or actual sales calls. We'll further assume that the rep is at the first prospect's doorstep at the beginning of the 8 hour period. In this 8 hour day, the rep would be able to make roughly 16 sales calls.

We know that sales is an imperfect art form and making 16 calls in this example is undoubtedly a stretch. We know that the rep will need to return phone calls and follow up on and resolve problems that might occur. These will consume some of the day which will further reduce the actual number of calls that get made. So let's say that on a good day the rep can make 10 calls.

Now let's complicate this scenario by introducing events or activities that tend to waste a sales person's time. Here's a list of our top ten time killers:

1. Poor routing through a territory increasing the average travel time between accounts.

2. Making a face-to-face contact to answer a question or resolve a minor customer issue when a phone call would have sufficed.

3. Doing administrative (non-selling) tasks such as paperwork during prime selling time.

4. Calling on non-decison makers.

5. Calling on prospects who will never buy anything or simply can't afford to buy from you.

6. Making too many calls to the same account or prospect.

7. Finding every reason possible not to make sales calls by doing make-work activities that yield no real return.

8. Leaving at the start of normal business hours from home or the office to drive to the first call and/or driving home or back to the office before putting in a full day in the field.

9. Preparing proposals during prime selling time.

10. Spending too much time with any given customer or prospect.

If a sales person engages in any or all of these activities, the number of calls that can be made is further reduced. In extreme cases, the sales person is doing more of these activities than actual selling activities. In many cases, a sales person is often not even aware they are doing one or more of these things and are chewing up significant chunks of time in non-selling activities.

The sales manager must act as a role model and mentor to help the sales person more effectively manage his/her time. Sales people need to understand clearly that time really is money and that selling is, in most cases, a matter of relationship development and maximizing the number of quality contacts made. Without enough time devoted to actual sales activities, it is difficult to achieve either.