Pivoting Your Business

Accomplishing Goals and Setting Daily Trends

If you’ve been setting lofty, long-term goals and not seeing the progress that you’d expected, it may be time to consider pivoting your business.  It doesn’t matter if you discuss goals with your team every day or once a week, it is human nature to procrastinate and take the first few days of the month off after a long-fought battle the previous month which is likely what your employees are doing.  If you think that setting additional goals is the answer you may be surprised, even more ambitious goals set for a few months down the line or even over the next year may not have the impact you are looking for.  Obviously there can be a lot of reasons that corporations don’t meet their quarterly, monthly or even weekly goals.  Is the infrastructure built incorrectly?  Are the conversations with customers meaningful?  If you’ve already analyzed the other parts of your business, realistically your problem may be with the way your company sets goals! 

Analyzing Goals & Objectives

Setting short-term goals can allow your company to react quicker to market changes.  When a corporation begins to outline monthly goals, it plays into an employee’s natural urge to let the beginning of the month slide by and then “cram for the exam” at the end of the month.  With a bit of research, you will find that even at the most successful company’s there are employees who wait until the last minute to accomplish an objective.  Some seasoned veterans even derive satisfaction from pulling a project together out of thin air at the last minute.  Unfortunately, this process of procrastination can cause a lot of unnecessary stress and is not healthy for anyone.  Delaying the work that needs to be done only applies additional pressure in a corporate setting where pressures to succeed and meet expectations are already high.  In addition to the extra stress that is involved, when an employee saves an important task for the last minute it is important that they understand the risk that they are taking.  Risking a high-level job or a well-paid position solely on your ability to scramble is never the solution.  Even if you are able to capitalize on your procrastination a few months in a row it does not mean that your decision-making process is sound.  As a business owner it is in your best interest to create a dynamic where each and every day is producing a result.  While we all know that is an unrealistic goal at first, striving to be ahead of the curve will always prove to be beneficial.

The Process Moving Forward    

So, what is the correct approach?  Is it possible to pivot a company’s process to improve sales goals?  From experience we have discovered that turning your monthly or yearly goals and objectives into daily goals can be extremely beneficial.  Meeting with your team on a regular basis and explaining to them that the daily goal numbers are the one the company should be striving for has the potential to eliminate procrastination and scrambling entirely.  If your goal is to make $20,000 in revenue in a month, instead of scrambling to make the last $5,000 in the last week, why not shoot for $1,000 in sales each day?  Even if your teams do not succeed the first day or even the first week, do not be discouraged.  By talking about daily goals and asking critical questions your team will begin to discover distinctions, issues and solutions that will move goals forward.  If every day you are asking your team the same questions receiving some sort of answer you may discover the key to achieving $1,000 in sales a lot quicker than anyone would have imagined.  While occasionally the solutions do appear all at once, more times than not they will reveal themselves over a period of a few months.

Conclusion

Problems do not get solved just by looking at them.  As a business owner you have to investigate and probe.  Is it possible your sales team is not reaching enough customers each day to achieve monthly sales objectives?  These are questions that need to be asked.  By having conversations with your team every day and diving deep into the reasons that certain goals are not being achieved you will notice that the tides will begin to change.  Could your team be achieving at a higher level?  There’s truly only one way to know!  Stay tuned for more articles and visit www.exitmindset.com to learn more about how you can pivot your product, infrastructure and conversations to better serve your company and its valuation.