MANAGING

YOUR TEAM’S
CSFs AND GOALS

MANAGER’S EDGE
A Southwestern Consulting ME Module

MANAGING YOUR TEAM’S CSFS & GOALS © Southwestern Consulting - Do Not Redistribute MA NAGI NG YO U R T EAM S C SF S A ND G OA LS
DON’T EXPECT UNLESS YOU INSPECT
As a leader, you probably have certain expectations and set big goals for your team.
However, it’s easy to forget to dive into the details and inspect what’s actually
happening. When your expectations of your team members fall through, you’re the
one who is frustrated, but you may not have taken the time to inspect the details
along the way.

Inspecting the details does not mean you have to micromanage your team. Inspecting
is about getting to the facts. Setting expectations can be an emotional process.
There’s excitement and sometimes frustration. You face the danger of living in a false
reality if you expect goals to happen without following up on the details. Inspecting is
part of accountability, motivation, and inspiration. Sometimes when you get into the
details, you realize even bigger goals are possible—much bigger than those
initial expectations.

The emotion that is tied to goals and expectations needs to be matched with the
logical effort of inspection. If you want to see exponential growth for your team,
you need to be inspecting the details weekly, and even daily. Look at the ratios—the
relationships between dials, meetings, sales, and referrals. Tracking those activities
will allow you to lead your people better. If you do not know those details, then you
might be training on a topic that isn’t relevant to your team members or encouraging
a goal that isn’t even possible. You might think someone is doing amazingly well, but
when you inspect the numbers, you realize they are actually underperforming based
on their potential.

Setting goals is one thing, but hitting those goals requires accountability and follow-
through. If you want your people to meet their goals, then you have to inspect the
details on a daily and weekly basis. Then you can coach, train, mentor, motivate, and
hold people accountable in a way that was never possible before.

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YOU GET WHAT YOU PROMOTE
A great leader is a great promoter. Most companies promote results with a Top
Producer leaderboard, and everyone knows who the Top Producers are. This practice
is good, but it’s also very limited. If you’re a leader and you want to have the entire
team feeling like they’re achieving and striving for a certain goal, you can achieve this
by promoting activity. When you think of how you are managing your team’s Critical
Success Factors (CSFs), how are you currently promoting those numbers?

It can be demotivating to your team to just send out the CSFs and ask why people
aren’t hitting their numbers. The best way to hold people accountable and get them
excited about tracking their numbers is to promote the numbers the right way. You
can do this by creating a leaderboard that has the top categories of activity on
which you want your team to focus. For example, the categories might include the
number of phone calls made, the number of decision-makers reached, the number of
appointments set, the number of contracts signed, or the number of
referrals received.

To get results, promote activity in three different ways:

1. Publicly recognize the leaders on a weekly basis.

Create a template that has your top three people in each category, and send it
out to the whole company. In addition to that, on a team call or meeting every
week, publicly recognize your top three people in all areas of activity.

2. Create contests for your team using your activity leaderboard.

Determine in which areas your team might need improvement and offer a prize to
the leader. It doesn’t need to be huge. A gift card or simple prize will do.
Recognition and bragging rights can go a long way when motivating your team.

3. Review your salespeople’s CSFs in your Personal Conferences (PCs).

Every time you meet with your team members one-on-one, print off a report of
their activity and review it together. Look at the report before your PC and
highlight one or two areas that could take your team member’s business to the
next level. Create accountability together by coming up with a reward for hitting
their goals.

Using CSFs to motivate your team will inspire people in a more concrete way than
focusing on production alone will. Helping your salespeople hit concrete daily goals
will help them build habits and confidence in the process. That’s when the results
follow. You get what you promote.

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UNDERSTANDING YOUR
KEY CSF RATIOS
You cannot expect unless you inspect. Understanding your key CSFs is essential
to success.

So many people push, fight, and refuse to track their activity or think through their ratios.
There are some basic, fundamental ratios that most salespeople need to know and be
able to track, regardless of industry.

EXAMPLES OF SOME BASIC, FUNDAMENTAL RATIOS

DIAL-TO-REACH RATIO
How many phone calls do you have to make, doors do you have to knock on, or
contacts do you need to make to reach one decision-maker?
• 1 Reach / ____ Dials) x 100 = ____%

REACH-TO-APPOINTMENT RATIO
How many decision-makers do you have to talk with in order to get one of them to
set an appointment with you?
• 1 Appointment / ____ Reaches) x 100 = ____%

APPOINTMENT-SET-TO-APPOINTMENT-RUN RATIO
How many appointments must you set in order to run one appointment? In other
words, what is your appointment cancellation ratio?
• 1 Appointment-Run / ____ Appointments-Set) x 100 = ____%

APPOINTMENT-TO-NEXT-STEP RATIO OR, APPOINTMENT-TO-CLOSE RATIO

How many people do you need to meet with in order to close one sale?
• 1 Close / ____ Appointments) x 100 = ____%
• 1 Next Step / ____ Appointments) x 100 = ____%

REFERRAL-TO-MEETING RATIO
How many meetings must you run in order to get one referral? Or in every meeting
how many referrals do you average? If you aren’t currently asking for referrals in
meetings, set a weekly minimum.
• 1 Meeting / ____ Appointments-Run) x 100 = ____%

MANAGING YOUR TEAM’S CSFS & GOALS © Southwestern Consulting - Do Not Redistribute 4
UNDERSTANDING YOUR
KEY CSF RATIOS continued
Oftentimes, when managers have people track their activity, the team feels as though
they are being micromanaged. But tracking activity is about knowing what you’re
doing in order to have something to measure. Why wouldn’t you want to know if you’re
improving or not?

Measuring your team’s ratios is like having a GPS device. People used to fly planes
without GPS devices. They could take off, land, and get where they needed utilizing very
rudimentary maps and compasses. This got the job done, but it wasn’t as safe, efficient,
or effective. Most would agree they feel safer knowing that the plane they are flying on
has a GPS device.

A GPS will guide you and let you know in which direction you need to be heading to stay
on course, which is what having your team track their ratios does for your business.

One of the tools you can use to help you track your team’s activity is a Goal Card (see the
examples on pages 10–11). Your team will have a spreadsheet with all of their activities
across the top: their dials, reaches, appointments set, new business/recruits closed,
referrals, etc. Throughout the day, they will track the number of each activity that they
did. At the end of the day, they can use the online CSFs tracking system to log their
activity so that you can run reports.

The ability to track and understand your team’s

ratios is vital to finding more ways to increase
your efficiency and effectiveness as well as
your revenue.

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DETERMINING YOUR TEAM’S CSFs
Management gets somewhat of a bad reputation, but to be an effective leader, you
must also be an effective manager. This means focusing on the numbers. You should
have an understanding of what kind of activities you need to track and what daily
and weekly goals your team should be hitting. Then you can use that information to
duplicate and scale your business.

In order to determine what your team’s daily activities should be, you’ll need to
reverse engineer your goals. The following steps will help you establish your
team’s CSFs.

1. What is your company’s overall goal?

Begin with the end in mind. Stephen Covey covers this concept in his book,
7 Habits of Highly Effective People. You need to start with a clear vision of your
destination. What is your specific revenue goal for the year? As an example, let’s
say your company’s goal is $50 million in revenue.

2. How many salespeople do you have?

If you have 50 salespeople, then each of them will need to sell $1 million in
revenue this year.

3. How much is each customer or sale worth?

In other words, what does the average sale come out to across the entire
company? For this example, it will be $10,000.

4. How many customers is that for each salesperson annually?

Divide $1 million by $10,000, which equals 100 customers per salesperson.

5. How many customers is that per salesperson per month?

To begin to reverse engineer this number into activity, you take the total number
of customers each salesperson needs for the year and divide it by 12 to get the
monthly number. In the example provided, this is 8.3 customers per month, which
rounds up to 9. It’s important to overshoot your goal and round up the decimal
point. Depending on your cancellations, you may even want to bump it up to 10
customers per month to be on the safe side. (You can also divide this out to a
weekly number by dividing the monthly number by 4. This is 48 weeks total and
takes into account vacation and holidays during the year.)

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DETERMINING YOUR TEAM’S CSFs continued
6. How many proposals do you have to do to sell one customer?
For the example, the closing ratio is 2:1. In other words, for every 2 proposals, you
get 1 client. So if you want ten customers a month, your salespeople will each
need 20 proposals per month, which comes out to five proposals per week.

7. What activity does it take to get to the presentation stage?

How many decision-makers do you need to have a conversation with to get to the
presentation stage? Let’s say it’s two. For every two people you meet with, you
do one presentation. This means each salesperson needs ten meetings per week
to reach five presentations. This is two meetings per day to hit your goal.

8. How many reaches do your salespeople need to make?

What is your dial-to-reach ratio? In order to get those two meetings per day, how
many conversations with a decision-maker would it take? Let’s say you need to
talk to four decision-makers to set one appointment. If you multiply that by the
number of meetings, this means you would need eight reaches per day to hit your
meeting goal.

9. How many calls do you need to get those reaches?

How many calls do you need to make to talk to that many decision-makers? Let’s
say your call-to-reach ratio is 2:1. For every 2 dials you make, you get 1 reach. If
you multiply this number by the amount of reaches you need, you get 16 calls
total needed each day.

This math is one of the most important skills you can develop as a manager. Once
you have these numbers, you need to help your team track their activity. Tracking
your team’s activity every week will help you to track your goals in real time and hold
everyone accountable.

Using the method described in 1 Annual Income Target

this section, fill in your team’s 2 Average Commission Per Sale
goals in the chart to the right. 3 Annual Customer Goal
4 Monthly Customer Goal
5 Weekly Customer Goal
6 Weekly Appointment-Run Goal
7 Weekly Appointment-Set Goal
8 Daily Appointment-Set Goal
9 Daily Reach Goal
10 Goal Period Reach Goal
11 Goal Period Dials Goal

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MANAGING YOUR TEAM’S CSFs
WHY TRACK NUMBERS?

There are many ways you can use activity tracking to manage your team. As the
leader, you need to set the example by tracking your own activity. It’s also important
to explain to your team why tracking their numbers will help them. Why
track numbers?

1. It creates awareness.
2. It puts focus on activity.
3. It creates consistency.

What are some reasons people might not fill out their CSFs?

HOW SHOULD YOU USE CSFs?

As the leader, how should you use CSFs?

1. To give recognition.
2. To provide accountability
3. To forecast training.

What are some ways you can effectively promote activity with your team?

MANAGING YOUR TEAM’S CSFS & GOALS © Southwestern Consulting - Do Not Redistribute 8
3-STEP EVALUATION PROCESS FOR CSFs
There is a simple three-step process that you should use when evaluating the CSFs of
your team.

STEP 1

REVIEW
You need to review your and your team’s CSFs regularly—preferably once a day.
Also, on a regular basis, you need to run activity reports, sit down with your team
members, and walk through their stats. Ask them to tell you presentation by
presentation what is happening and what challenges they are running into. They
should be able to provide explicit details about each item on the CSF.

STEP 2

RECONCILE
Look at the stats and make sure that they actually make sense. Watch for things like
someone setting more appointments than phone calls they made. It’s impossible.
They should have logic in their reporting. Also, reconcile the parts of their numbers
that you can with your actual numbers. For example, someone might report that they
signed five new customers last week, but if you haven’t seen the paperwork on them,
then there might be something happening there.

STEP 3

REWARD
Once you have verified that their stats are accurate, announce who the leaders are
in work habits. It builds healthy competition in something that everyone has control
over, and it gives people confidence. Showing them that work is directly related to
production is an important element of leadership.

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GOAL CARD EXAMPLES
The following are examples of what your team’s daily Goal Cards might look like. Keep
in mind inside and outside sales teams may need different Goal Cards.

Monday Week of: / / - / /

Dials Goal Reaches Goal Appointment Goal Follow-up Goal New Goal Referrals Goal
Time Run Calls Clients
8am - 10am
10am - 12pm
1pm - 3pm
3pm - 5pm
Total

Tuesday
Dials Goal Reaches Goal Appointment Goal Follow-up Goal New Goal Referrals Goal
Time Run Calls Clients
8am - 10am
10am - 12pm
1pm - 3pm
3pm - 5pm
Total

Wednesday
Dials Goal Reaches Goal Appointment Goal Follow-up Goal New Goal Referrals Goal
Time Run Calls Clients
8am - 10am
10am - 12pm
1pm - 3pm
3pm - 5pm
Total

Thursday
Dials Goal Reaches Goal Appointment Goal Follow-up Goal New Goal Referrals Goal
Time Run Calls Clients
8am - 10am
10am - 12pm
1pm - 3pm
3pm - 5pm
Total

Friday
Dials Goal Reaches Goal Appointment Goal Follow-up Goal New Goal Referrals Goal
Time Run Calls Clients
8am - 10am
10am - 12pm
1pm - 3pm
3pm - 5pm
Total

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GOAL CARD EXAMPLES continued
ACTIVITY GOAL EXAMPLES

INSIDE SALES CSFS

Dials

New Contacts

Follow-Up Contacts

Phone Presentations

Sales

Referrals

OUTSIDE SALES CSFS

Dials

New Contacts

Follow-Up Contacts

Intial Meetings

One-on-One Presentations

Sales

Referrals

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HOW TO IDENTIFY GROWTH
OPPORTUNITIES FROM CSFs
To improve your team’s ratios and pursue the goal of constant, never-ending
improvement, tracking and understanding their ratios is vital. Tweaking and finding
more ways to increase your team’s efficiency and effectiveness will help bring your
business to the next level.

REVIEW YOUR TEAM’S CSFs

DAILY AND WEEKLY QUESTIONS
On a routine basis, ask your team members the following questions:

1. “Is this accurate?”

2. “Are there any CSFs that are off?”
3. “Why is this CSF off?”
4. “How do you feel about that?”
5. “What are you going to do to improve the ratio?”

IMPROVE RATIOS
In the lists below, we’ve identified the most common areas of improvement for the
following ratios:

DIAL-TO-DIAL GOAL RATIO IS LOW:

• Overcoming call reluctance

• Working through fear
• Addressing issues with time management and scheduling
• Focusing on lead generation, referrals, and LinkedIn prospecting
• Prioritizing who to call

DIAL-TO-REACH RATIO IS LOW:

• Inspecting the quality of the leads

• Improving phone skills
• Learning to better get around gatekeepers
• Leaving effective voicemails
• Calling at the right time of day
• Avoid calling the same people

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HOW TO IDENTIFY GROWTH
OPPORTUNITIES FROM CSFs continued
REACH-TO-APPOINTMENT-SET RATIO IS LOW:

• Using the phone script

• Answering objections over the phone
• Building confidence
• Becoming a student of the game
• Using hot buttons
• Closing for the appointment, not the final sale
• Avoiding giving the price away too early
• Creating a buying atmosphere
• Being assumptive by having their calendar out when setting the appointment

APPOINTMENT-SET-TO-APPOINTMENT-RUN GOAL RATIO

(APPOINTMENT CANCELLATION RATIO) IS LOW:

• Solidifying the appointment

• Follow up
• Sending thank-you cards
• Sending a calendar invite
• Checking their calendar to see that the appointment has been accepted
• Creating appointment doubt and saying, “I’ll call to confirm”
• Scheduling appointments too far out (>3 weeks)

APPOINTMENT-RUN/PRESENTATION-TO-THE-CLOSE RATIO IS LOW:

• Using the five-step introduction

• Having all of the decision-makers in the presentation/meeting
• Creating a sense of urgency
• Answering objections
• Using the C.P.R. method to create pain
• Following the closing process and script

PRESENTATION-TO-REFERRALS-GOAL RATIO IS LOW (LESS THAN TWO):

• Asking for referrals

• Being prepared with a referrals hit list
• Having a mindset for referrals

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ACTION ITEMS

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