Performance Management

You can’t reach greatness without established goals to reach.

If you don’t know by now, CallSource really believes in the power of goal setting and achieving.

To be the best of the best, it is important to set goals. You must always have something to strive for.

We already went through the first 3 steps of goal-setting; now we are at part 2 to finish up how you can properly set goals with employees to help your business progress positively.

Here are the 6 steps again:

1. Determine goals based on business objectives
2. Set specific goals
3. Develop a timeline for accomplishing each goal
4. Communicate goals to each team member
5. Create accountability through regular monitoring and employee feedback
6. Practice continuous improvement

Now let’s finish it up!

Culture Shift

Recreating your business culture may be necessary to achieve your goals. Your exact circumstances may require significant alteration to how you manage your team or no change at all. Only you as the business’ leader can decide. But conducting a careful analysis of what will be needed to reach your goals is a good place to start. Here are some questions to ask:

• Are my team members invested in the success of the business?
• Are my team members motivated to stretch and achieve new levels of success?
• Do my call handlers know their role in the sales cycle is to set appointments?
• Can my team members correctly answer what their goals are?
• Can my team members correctly answer what the company goals are?
• If a team member falls short of their goals, are there specific steps that will be taken?

If “No” is often the answer to these questions, meeting your goals may require a shift in culture. Cultural shifts do not need to be frightening or painful for your team. Nor does it require you to shed what makes your business a fun and rewarding place to work. Understanding the nature of the change, setting clear goals and expectations, and communicating effectively with your team will create a smooth process.

Creating a consultative sales culture and a culture of accountability has helped many CallSource clients reach their performance goals.

Creating a consultative sales culture simply means that call handlers understand that their role is to set appointments for qualified prospects. This means, making an effort to understand the caller’s needs, building value and asking for the appointment.

A culture of accountability is not designed for the sole purpose of punishing poor performers. Strong performers will benefit, as their efforts will shine through and be recognized. Each team member will understand his or her role and how that role impacts the success of the organization. Standards and goals will be defined, and each person will work to achieve those goals. Those who are falling short will accept the need for additional coaching and training and make an effort to learn.

Implement Ongoing Check-ins

To make sure you are achieving your goals, plan on holding regular “check-ins” with staff. These might be daily, weekly, or monthly.

Choose what best suits your business, and communicate the schedule of the check-ins with your employees as well.

Check-ins can be included in your action plan and given to call handlers ahead of time. This will hold them accountable so that they will be continuously working towards improvement.

By checking in, whether these might be held as a team meeting, individual meetings, or looking at reports weekly, or a mix of all of these, make sure there is a system in place to keep your goals in check and on track.

Keep Aiming Towards New Goals

Once you have hit your goals, make sure to keep aiming to be better or stay the best. Your goal may be a continued improvement or maintain consistency. No matter the case, always have a goal in mind and make sure to relay these to your employees. Post them somewhere, hold ongoing meetings, and stay on top of the progress. Once you have achieved your major goals, you are on the path to stay at the top.

Never become complacent. By continuously setting goals you will become as successful as possible.
How do you set goals and track your progress? Drop us a comment below!

Maybe you have goals, maybe you don’t – either way, check out these steps to make sure you’re establishing useful and specific goals.

In order to achieve higher results, whether in business, personal life, or elsewhere, it is important to set goals. How can one expect improvement without knowing what to aim for?

Whether big or small, short term or long term, there should always be goals to achieve. Successful leaders work with their team to set goals and ensure continued progress by establishing accountability.

When setting your goals, there are important steps to follow:

Customer Service Representatives are a vital part of the business and help you achieve your goals as a whole. They are the first person new customers will speak to and leave a lasting impression on your business.

Determining Your Goals

The first step in setting goals is to analyze your current standings; once you have an understanding of where you are you can then begin thinking of where you want to go. Utilizing the tools CallSource provides helps identify your current standings in the following categories:

After you establish your current standing baseline, you need to determine your desired goals. Your office’s areas for improvement may be evident, or some assistance may be needed. When analyzing reports within CallSource or whatever call tracking software you use, your areas for improvement or “red flags” should become apparent.

Focus on specific areas, rather than all areas simultaneously. Within certain areas, you may choose to focus on improving only specific metrics. Focusing on improving the conversion rate, not the number of appointments set, is one example.

The number of areas – and specific goals – chosen should be manageable for your business given the exact circumstances, staffing, and market variables. You may find some areas require immediate action or there is a logical progressive order. Over time you can refocus your attention to other goals. Creating goals is an essential step to improved performance and business outcomes.

The goals you set should reflect the overall business objectives. When creating your goals consider the following questions:

Set Specific Goals

It is important that the goals you set are specific. For example, to increase your conversion rate, it is not enough to say your goal is to “increase conversion;” set a specific conversion goal such as increase the conversion from 45% to 60%. If you do not set specific goals (SMART GOALS- Specific, Measurables, Assignable, Realistic, Time-Related), you create ambiguity and leave the result open to interpretation. Creating a culture of accountability is not possible in an ambiguous climate.

Well-defined goals establish clear expectations. Anyone on your team, including new employees, will have a clear understanding of what is expected of them.

Once you determine your goals, it is crucial to communicate these goals to each member of your team. Consistently sharing the team’s actual numbers compared to their goals reinforces the importance of meeting the goal. It also allows you and the team to monitor individual and team progress and identify what steps need to be taken to reach the goal.

Establish an Improvement Timeline

It is essential to assign a reasonable deadline for meeting your goals once they have been determined. Without an end date, it is difficult to enforce that the goal will be met. This also creates ambiguity for your team.

For example, if your office is currently converting 60% of prospects to appointments, but you would like to improve the conversion rate to 85%, this cannot be achieved in a one month period. Both short term and long term goals need to be implemented in this example. Increase the conversion in small increments each month. Perhaps try improving by 5% monthly, until you reach your goal of an 85% conversion rate within five months.

While it is important to share the long-term goal(s) with your call handlers, it is vital to then break down the plan of attack to reach this overall goal by using short-term goals. By asking your team to concentrate on short-term goals while advancing to the end goal, it makes the effort seem achievable. Each step should be celebrated.

Asking your team to improve their conversion rates by 25% and not offer additional information, may make the goal feel unobtainable and therefore lower the morale. This will result in a counter effect.
Improvement steps with a specified completion date create accountability and ensure goals remain the focus of your team – not get lost in the day-to-day shuffle.

Set Steps to Achieve Goals

Once your improvement timeline is complete, set the steps of how your team will achieve each of these goals. These steps might include having call takers take certain webinar courses, reviewing their recorded calls and conversion rates, and internal training.

The steps you create should correspond to a specific action plan and be given to call handlers to keep handy. This way, they will know what steps to achieve according to your schedule. There will be no surprises when the deadlines approach and they will know with clarity what steps need to be taken.

With every mini goal, there should be some training and feedback for the call handlers to go along with meeting these goals. Whoever supervises the Customer Service Representatives should ultimately be responsible for ensuring their success.

Stay tuned for part 2 of how to properly establish goals – subscribe to our blog now to be notified as soon as the next post goes up!