We aren't hitting goals - What do we do?

“We Aren’t Hitting Our Goals—What Do We Do?”

Missing goals isn’t usually a motivation problem. It’s a clarity and execution problem.

In today’s Question of the Day, I break goal-setting into two critical parts: setting the goal and setting the actionables to actually achieve it.

In this episode, we cover:

•  Why most teams miss goals even when they’re working hard 
•  How to properly structure goals using the SMARTER framework
•  The difference between a goal and the daily actions required to hit it 
•  How to create alignment between expectations, behavior, and results 

If your team keeps falling short of targets, this episode will help you tighten up both the goal itself—and the plan to reach it.

Have a Question? - Submit your questions to chrish@nexstarnetwork.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Welcome to the question of the day. Today's question is from Luke in Virginia. And Luke asks, We set goals, but we're not making any traction on them. What are we doing wrong? Great question. First off, I love that you're setting goals. That's that's huge. That's better than most companies out there. You're actually setting goals way to go. Now, why aren't we hitting the goals? I don't know. That's a deep subject, right? Like I'd love to come out and visit, I'd love to ride along with the entire process. So not just like the salespeople, but ride along from the very incoming of the lead to the very like execution and install. I'd love to see where the opportunities are at there because I'm betting, I'm betting that would start to paint a picture of why we're not hitting our goals. And so I guess with without being able to do that, I would say a couple of things. Goals have two parts. There's two main parts to goals. There's number one, there's actually setting the goal. And then number two, there's the actionables. Like what are the actions that go into the goals? And so let's let's talk about those two things. Let's break those two things down. So number number one was setting the goal, the actual setting of the goal. So let's talk about that first. Now you've probably heard of SMART goals. And so when you set your goal, you want it to be a SMART goal. And if you're not familiar with that, a SMART goal, uh, the S stands for specific. So you want to be specific. And when I when I think of being specific, I think of like the five W's and the H, the who, what, when, where, why, and how. Like you learned that in third grade, and you told your teacher, why do I even need to know this? Well, this is why you need to know it. Um, to be specific. So when you're writing a goal, you want to be specific. Who's doing this? What are they doing? When are they doing it? You want to be very specific. And I even think of this like kind of like a contract, to be honest. Like I feel like I'm writing up a contract of one party's gonna do this and the second party's gonna do that. And and there is two parties in this, by the way. There, there's two parties. There's the employee that is setting the goal, and then there's their manager, their leader, because both of you have a part in this. And this is where you're you're being specific. Employee will do this, and manager will do this. You each have a hand in this. The employee should be the one executing, driving the change. The manager is the one clearing the hurdles, providing feedback. But you both have a part in this and be very specific what each of your part is, as if you're writing a contract. So be specific. That's the yes. The M, the M is measurable. So measurable. At the end of this goal, whenever this goal time is up, I should be able to clearly see we hit it or we didn't. It should be a yes or no. You did it or you didn't do it. There should be no ambiguity. So it has to be something that you can measure. And I'll give you an example of ambiguity. So let's say, let's say I have a salesperson and they're closing at 45%, and we say in quarter two, we're gonna get our closing to 50%. We're gonna increase at 5%. Now, what exactly does that mean? Does that mean on the last day of the quarter they're at 50%? Is that 50% over the entire quarter? Is that 50% on just that month? If they hit 50% in the second month of the quarter, but not the third month of the quarter, did they hit it or not? And so maybe this kind of ties back into being specific, but you got to be specific and it has to be measurable. And so, usually, like in that example, what I would do is I would stair step it that you're at 45% now going over the the next quarter. I want to see you at 46% the first month, 48% the second month, and 50% by the third month. So that way you're really constantly improving and in small chunks. So maybe spell that out, be specific, but it's very measurable. We did it or we didn't do it. Now, some things are gonna be tough to measure. I had a I had a sales guy on my team that uh didn't smile very often. He looked grumpy all the time, right? And we I and we thought that that probably impacted his relationship and rapport building with with his customers. And so we agreed that you know we want to try to smile more. And so we created a goal where he needed to smile with his customer 10 times throughout the day. I needed to catch him smiling 10 times throughout the day. So if he smiled and I didn't catch it, it didn't count. But what I started doing then was I started carrying 10 pennies in my pocket, in my right pocket. And by the end of the day, I would need to move all those pennies to the left pocket. So every time I saw him smiling, I would take one penny and put it into the left pocket. And so the goal was measurable now. I had to see him smiling 10 times, and that's how I tracked it. And it made us aware, right? It made us very aware. And he started smiling more, and and we hit that goal, right? So we made it measurable. Some of them in sales are very easy to measure, others you got to be a little creative, but measurable. Now, the A, the A stands for achievable. Is this an achievable goal? Now, when I set a goal with an employee, usually one of three things happens. Again, let's take my example of I got a 45% closer. And let's say we sat down and I said, Hey, how high could we get our closing? I'm probably gonna get one of three answers. I'm either gonna get an answer where they don't really push themselves at all. They're gonna say, Well, I did 45 this month. I guess my goal would be 45 again. And that's where you may have to talk that employee up a little bit. Like, well, what if we started, you know, better supporting, better training, you know, what if we started doing something like how high could we could we get it up a little bit? So you're gonna have to talk them up a little bit. Now, the second answer you might get would be um they they want to please you, right? And so they say, like, oh boss, I can do 80%. Now that now that's not really achievable, right? And so I want to make this goal achievable. If we're doing 45% now, I can't really expect you to jump up to 80%. And and so that's not really achievable. So there you're gonna have to talk them down a little bit and maybe, well, what if we did 50? Let's start at just 5%, right? And the third answer they'll give you it'd be the exact answer that you want to give. It's that one that that pushes them a little bit, but um uh is an achievable goal, like that 50%, and then just run with it, right? And now sometimes, sometimes too, maybe we don't have enough data or history to to know is it achievable or not? This is where you can use stretch goals too. So let's say, let's say this is a new employee, it was their first month out and they hit 45. I mean, 50 might be too easy, uh, but it might be too hard too. So maybe make the goal 50, but add a stretch goal on top of it of like 55, right? And so, so really I'm gonna hold them accountable to 50, but now they they have some kind of incentive to go a little further and and not just stop at 50. So it has to be achievable though. Uh R, the R stands for relevant, that whatever the goal is is tied into their actual job duties. So I want this relative to their job duties. And the T is time bound. There has to be uh a stop date on this, right? And so we're in sales, and so usually this is monthly or quarterly. You could have longer goals, but I think if you have longer goals, you'd want to break it down into monthly or quarterly. Even the quarterly, I break into monthly. So we typically run in monthly cycles, uh, but I want a time bound that this goal will be achieved by whatever date, and that it's clearly measurable, so it's yes or no, we achieved it or not. So that's a smart goal. Specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time bound. But I don't just do SMART goals, I do SMART er goals, like those old Budweiser commercials, right? Like err. Now the err, ER, the E stands for employee-driven. I want the employee coming up with this goal. I want the employee coming up with what are the actions we're gonna do to achieve this goal. I want it to be their idea. And that's hard as a manager because I just want to tell them what to do. I want to say you got to be here, and these are the things you're gonna do to get there. But the thing is, when my boss tells me what to do, I'm not very excited to do those things because it's not my idea. I'm just doing it because the company tells me to do it. I'm not passionate about it. I may do it, but my heart's not in it. But if it's my idea, well, now I got a little bit of ego tied into this. Like it was my idea. I want to see it through, I want to make sure it's successful. And so I want this to be their idea. Whatever that goal number is, I want it to be what they think they can accomplish. Whatever the actions are they're gonna spell out to get there, I want it to be their idea. Now I can I can try to finesse that, I can sprinkle in ideas, I can support them in this, but but I at the end of the day, I want it employee driven. It has to be their idea. Now I'm gonna make sure that it ties into our sales plan and our budget, but it still has to be their idea. They have to be bought in on this goal. So the E stands for employee-driven, and the R is revisited, revisited weekly, that we are checking in on this goal every single week. The very first time I set goals with my team, my GM told me, hey, you got to set goals with your team. So I sat down on the first of the month and I said, Hey, team, where are we gonna get to? Right. And they told me a bunch of numbers and I was like, Yeah, this is great, this is great. We're gonna be number one team by the end of the month, right? And I never talked about it again the rest of the month until my GM reminded me on the 29th of where we were at for our goals. And I sat down and I said, Hey, all right, let's see where we're at on our goals. You said you were gonna be here, and we're not even halfway. And that was the story across the team. Here we had two days left in the month to hit our goals, and it was very obvious we were not gonna hit our goals in the last two days. I had allowed us to drive into the ditch, and when you're in the ditch, you can't steer back out, you're in the ditch. If you revisit this weekly, you can see that you're drifting towards the ditch. You can take corrective action to not get in the ditch. And that's why you want to revisit these weekly. You should have a weekly one-on-one with your employees. And if your employee should have a weekly one-on-one with your manager, that's where we're revisiting this and saying, are we on track for the goals that we set? So that's a smarter goal. Specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound, employee-driven, and revisited weekly. So that's that's the first part, setting the goal. I want it to be a smarter goal. Now, here's the second part, and this is the part most teams miss it's the actionables. What are the actions you're going to do to get these results? What are you going to do different that you currently haven't been doing? So your performance, what you what you do now, has gotten the results. So in the case of the 45% closer, what you've been doing now has been equaling 45% closing. So if we want to get to 50, there's got to be something different we do or stop doing. But something has to change. So what are those actions? And that's the hard part. We got to sit down and we got to spell that out. What are the actions we're going to do that we're not currently doing to get that different result? And this is where, again, there's two people involved in this. There's the employee and there's the leader, right? So if you're the employee, you're the one driving change. You're going to do things like I'm going to start laying out an agenda at the beginning of each call. I'm going to learn how to overcome a price objection. I'm going to ask my manager to ride along and give me feedback. I'm going to take those acts, like, I'm going to put those things down. If I'm not currently doing them, those are things I'm going to do different. If you're the manager, you're going to put down the things you're going to do as well. So as a manager, I'm going to say, hey, I'm going to ride along with you weekly. I'm going to do a weekly training for the whole team. I'm going to connect you with your sales coach. Like, what are the things the manager is going to do? But make sure you can follow through on those things. So if the employee says, I want you to ride along with me weekly, and you say, I'm going to ride along with you weekly, you better be able to ride along with them weekly. Don't commit to something you know you're not going to be able to follow through on. And if you're stretched too thin, that's okay. Just say, hey, I don't know that I can make it weekly. I can make it bi-weekly. So come up with what are those actionables and then write them down as part of the goal. So you have the smarter goal, what what the end looks like, what success looks like. But now you're going to write down what are the actions that each person is going to do. So when we write it down, that's when it becomes that contract that I'm talking about. So both parties, the leader and the employee, it states specifically the action that they're going to take. So you define the goal together, it becomes that contract, that goal. It's smarter. It has actions tied to it. You will see progress. That's today's question of the day. If you're enjoying question today, follow, share, give a reading question of days on major streaming platforms. If you have a question, reach out to me via email. It'll be listed in the show description. Let's get your question answered. And if you're a next star member, schedule a call with me. Let's get this addressed one-on-one. Let's get very specific to your situation. I'm Coach Chris. We'll see you tomorrow.