Checking Progress on those Goals

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Now six weeks into the calendar year is a good time to review the progress you have made on your strategic goals. Having established the goals, you will need to ensure tracking, monitoring and evaluating systems are in place to manage your progress.

We will start by reviewing the goal statements themselves. Are they specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time limited (otherwise known as SMART goals)? If you have established an annual goal, it is time limited by the end of the year in question, say December 31 or whichever year end you have chosen for your review.

To be specific, your goals must state exactly what you wish to accomplish and, to be measurable, in quantifiable terms.

For example:
We will increase our active client roster.

Versus:
We will increase our active client roster by 50% to a total of 210 active clients, by December 31, 2008.

On December 31, you will either have 210 active clients or you won’t. Your degree of success will be relatively easy to identify.

The criterion of attainable refers to the ability of anyone to reach the goal given the same circumstances under which you are working. If it takes a month’s time on average for each sales person to develop each new lead to an active client, and you have 2 sales staff, assuming they have 100% conversion from leads to active clients, you could only reach 21 new clients by year’s end. The example I gave required 70 new clients.

By comparison, the realistic criterion refers to the likelihood that the goal will be attained under the same circumstances. If you have 5 sales staff regularly securing 1 new active client each month, after 12 months, you will have 60 new active clients. Can that same staff increase their conversion rate to achieve the required 70 new active clients by year’s end?

OK. You have reviewed your goals and you are satisfied that they meet the SMART criteria. Next post we will look at tracking your progress.