For small and medium-sized companies, after the team’s business process is confirmed, managers should set reasonable goals and gradually sort out the work process to standardize the operation process. This can ensure the continuity of long-term operation work and avoid the adverse impact of staff loss on store performance. Generally speaking, managers will use order volume, sales, profit margin and other indicators to set corresponding performance growth goals for operations. Although there is nothing wrong with this idea itself, the views and positioning of managers and operators are often inconsistent, which makes it difficult to implement the goals.
For large companies, goals are often split through company performance goals and ultimately allocated to each store and operator to establish a relatively complete KPI assessment system. However, this will cause the short-term interests of operators to deviate from the long-term interests of the team, which is mainly manifested in the following two situations.
(1) When the commission is low, the operator chooses to give up the execution target, causing the overall sales performance of the store to decline.
(2) In order to avoid adding tasks in the next assessment cycle, the operator is unwilling to exceed the target.
Both situations are very common. Managers can often find the first situation, but it is difficult to find the second situation. Even if managers can find the first situation, it is after the end of an assessment quarter, when the loss has already occurred. If it happens to coincide with special nodes such as season change, it will be difficult for the store sales to be improved in the next quarter, which will result in the entire team being unable to achieve the set goals.
Therefore, managers need to follow the SMART criteria when setting goals.
S stands for Specific, which means to clearly state the behavioral standards to be achieved in specific language, as simple as possible, but not too general.
M stands for Measurable, which means that the goal can be verified by quantity or behavior. If the set goal cannot be measured, managers cannot judge whether the goal can be achieved.
A stands for Attainable, which means that the goal can be achieved under objective conditions, and avoid setting goals that are too high or too low.
R stands for Relevant, which means that this goal must be related to the overall goal. If this goal is completely unrelated to other goals or has a low degree of relevance, then even if this goal is achieved, it will be meaningless.
T stands for Time-Bound, which means that the set goals must have a specific deadline to avoid delays in goals and unfair assessments.
In addition to splitting indicators, front-line managers also need more effective data tools to track the specific daily sales of stores, so that target management can be implemented.