Many marketing and sales teams have a monthly or quarterly cadence; goals are set at the beginning, results measured at the end and, in the middle, there’s a fuzzy interval during which teams are supposed to figure out how to hit their numbers. From a managerial perspective, no matter how talented your team is, this invites a substantial amount of risk.
Whether you are managing a sales team, a creative project, or a lead gen campaign, there is a natural human tendency to be overconfident in the beginning and not want to reveal concerns when progress toward a goal goes off track. Anyone who has managed a sales team knows the frustration of a seemingly-robust pipeline that suddenly deflates at the end of the quarter.
One of the best pieces of management advice to counter this dynamic it to pull bad news forward. When we identify issues early on, we preserve time to tap into the problem-solving capabilities of our teams and course correct. To do this, it helps to operationalize forecasts by doing the following:
- Determine your team’s baseline performance and dependencies
- Model how and when outcomes will occur
- Set short-term performance goals
- Create visibility with metrics
- Foster a daily practice of solving variances
Establishing a Performance Baseline and Identifying Dependencies
Performance happens in context. In addition to providing a benchmark, reviewing outcomes from prior periods allows us to understand what situational factors were at play that could also be factors this time around. Were their seasonality influences? Were there issues with members of the team? In the case of demand generation, how did the budget for that period compare to now? Where there internal or external collaborators and what was their influence?
The result of this review should be a statement like, “Given factors A, B, and C, we’ve historically performed at a rate of X (conversions) per Y (time interval). For example, “Given an advertising budget of $10K per month during calendar Q1 and sourcing creative from our agency partner, we have historically driven 200 people per month to product-focused webinars via LinkedIn ads.”
The more we understand about prior performance levels, the more we can control for as we translate our forecast into an operational plan.
Building an Operational Model of Your Forecast
It’s not enough to simply set high-level metric targets like sales or leads per quarter. The ability to drive revenue hinges on the orchestration of efforts between sales and marketing which requires a detailed understanding of how resources, work, and outcomes interact over time. To develop that picture, we need models.
Based on historical data, start with these key numbers:
- Length of the sales cycle
- Conversion rates at each sales funnel stage
- Average time spent in each sales funnel stage
- Conversion rates from contacts to marketing-qualified leads to sales-accepted leads
- Average time spent in each lead status
- Average new contact and MQL generation per week, per channel, with associated average spend levels
With these numbers in hand, it’s possible to create an Excel-based model (or, preferably, a simulation) that shows, by week, how invested resources will flow from contacts to MQLs, to SALs, to closed deals. With such a model in hand, you can determine the cadence at which each team must deliver their contributions. This will help on the front end to plan the timing of key activities and, once efforts are underway, it will help you identify variances to plan early so that you have as much time as possible to problem solve and course correct.
It is essential that every team member involved in executing the plan have an opportunity to raise concerns on the front end and, once those are addressed, affirmatively sign off and own the plan. Fostering an environment of trust and candor creates a foundation for accountability. When people have participated in a thoughtful, analytic approach to setting objectives, and have had an opportunity to voice concerns, their confidence in attaining the goal increases.
Setting Short-Term Performance Goals
A time-tested piece of wisdom about achieving goals is to eat the whale bite by bite. By breaking down large goals intoyour small chunks and spreading them over time, we front-load effort and creativity and avoid getting backed into a corner at the end of the month or quarter.
Additionally, setting weekly or even daily performance goals allows teams to more rapidly identify barriers. Every day is a perishable opportunity to fine-tune and perfect your marketing and sales process. You should view each day as a test of your operational hypothesis and a chance to iterate, improve, and maintain progress toward your objectives.
Finally, setting and achieving short-term goals build confidence within your team, and a sense of momentum and excitement within your organization. This sense of contribution and of being valued can be essential to retaining talent.
Creating Positive Visibility with Public Metrics
To maintain cadence, it’s essential that every member of the team have a shared sense of how their efforts are tracking to goals. To this end, it’s important that there are black and white daily or weekly indicators of progress.
When posting progress metrics, it is critical to let everyone understand the intent. Without the proper context, publicly-posted metrics may seem punitive and discouraging. Help everyone understand that the purpose of the metrics is to, as rapidly as possible, identify challenges and give teams opportunities to brainstorm and develop workarounds and solutions to those challenges.
Making Problem Solving a Core Daily Business Activity
When you operationalize your forecast and create a cadence that drives the tempo of your business, you have an opportunity to change how team members view their role at work each day. Rather than thinking of each day’s work as a series of tasks related to a project, each person can see how their work contributes to larger, shared goals the organization is working toward. This helps everyone more effectively align their efforts and feel invested in a shared mission.
Summary
Operationalizing forecasts and business goals helps to create a shared sense of cadence and progress in an organization. When large, longer-term goals are broken down into smaller, short-term objectives, teams can build confidence and momentum while also identifying and solving challenges more quickly.