Question: What should I do when my team doesn’t hit the goals we’ve set and agreed upon?

Gary Elekes; EGIA faculty member and CEO of iMarket Solutions:

The first thing that I always do when my team isn’t hitting goals is to look in the mirror and assessing the goals. Did I set the goals correctly? Were they reasonable? Were they S.M.A.R.T.?

If I feel like they were, the next question is figuring out the reasons why my team isn’t achieving the goals. Start looking at the metrics. The numbers tell the story.

Are lead counts where they need to be? Are closing rates where they need to be? Are tech lead turnovers where they need to be? There are a series of metrics that will give me the information I need before I attack the problem.

I like the idea of identifying the problem – what is actually the problem? What’s creating the gap for this particular team?

Sometimes, it could be something that’s going on personally. Maybe you have great leads. Maybe you have great opportunities. All that is happening as it should and it’s just something going on in their personal lives.

Think about it in terms of a situational analysis – define the problem. Find out what’s really creating the issue.

If it’s a skills problem, you bring in experts and lead trainings to improve their skillsets.

If it’s emotional, talk to your people and figure it out.

If it’s technical – lead generation, quality of leads, few opportunities, etc. – then you might have to fix your marketing plan.

It could be a little bit of all those things. In my 30 years of consulting experience, I tend to find it’s not just one big glaring issue. It’s not one big clear problem that you can fix before it gets to be a huge issue. Problems usually stem from a little bit of a lot of different things.

You have to look at the metrics to uncover the problems, prioritize what needs to be worked on, and attack them one at a time.