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Define Your Business Goals & Objectives for Your Salesforce Implementation

Our Vision that we developed in Step One must guide the team in developing our Objectives. Unlike our lofty Vision, our Objectives are much more specific and measurable. In step two we mapped out our existing Process at a high level. Now we need to go deeper and set specific measurable goals for improvement. Good business Objectives – Goals are measurable ways to either reduce costs – save time or increase sales. Folks at the C level will use these measures so it’s best we Goals & Objectives that speak their language.

A great way to look at Goals & Objectives is the SMART method are the Goals & Objectives SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant Time boxed. If not create Goals & Objectives that are.

From Wikipedia:

“The November 1981 issue of Management Review contained a paper by George T. Doran called There’s a S.M.A.R.T. way to write management’s goals and objectives.^[1][4] It discussed the importance of objectives and the difficulty of setting them.

Ideally speaking, each corporate, department, and section objective should be:

• Specific– target a specific area for improvement.
• Measurable– quantify or at least suggest an indicator of progress.
• Assignable– specify who will do it.
• Realistic– state what results can realistically be achieved, given available resources.
• Time-related– specify when the result(s) can be achieved.

Notice that these criteria don’t say that all objectives must be quantified on all levels of management. In certain situations it is not realistic to attempt quantification, particularly in staff middle-management positions. Practicing managers and corporations can lose the benefit of a more abstract objective in order to gain quantification. It is the combination of the objective and its action plan that is really important. Therefore serious management should focus on these twins and not just the objective.

— George T. Doran, There’s a S.M.A.R.T. way to write management’s goals and objectives^[1][4]”

We don’t know what we don’t know, so we need to combine the Tribal Knowledge from our insiders on how it is done with the Expertise of either a Salesforce Consultant or your Home-Grown Salesforce Expert. Don’t ignore the folks in the trenches with the Tribal Knowledge, Tachi Ono who key creator of the Toyota Production method said that the folks who wield the screwdrivers have a wealth of knowledge.

Example: One of my clients asked me to help a person in another department (different budget) with a report that they were struggling with. She needed a report on what Cases had closed last week for a particular Software Product. I asked her why she needed the report, she said to get their email addresses so she could send them an email with a link to a survey. I asked how often did she do this and how long did it take? She responded that it was a weekly chore that took 11/2 to 2 hours. I asked if she needed to review the records before she sent the email out, nope just clickety click and out they went. I suggested that we create an email template that mail merged the Case: Name, The Customer Name, Customer Service Reps Name, with the link to the survey. Then I can create a Salesforce Workflow to automate the process triggering off whenever a Customer Service Rep changed the Case Status to Closed and the Date range was for the current week.  We were successful and saved 100 hrs of her time a year, and a wage savings of about $3,000 per year.

Share some success stories at each Departments All Hands meeting ask each person to come up with 3 ways these relevant successes could be applied in their department. This gives each team member ownership in the Business Objectives.

It is also very valuable to map our Business Processes. If there is no clear consistent process Salesforce will not help much until a process is created. The mantra in the Software world is Process First, Software Second. Document each step of the process where we will be using Salesforce. When mapping your business process, it is often helpful to use a Kanban method called the 5 Whys. Asking Why do we do this digging ever deeper, with each of the 5 Why Questions. Often, we find that our processes have steps that where added to deal with things that “Happened Once Upon a Time” and are not longer relevant. I also find it beneficial to watch people perform their work, as they often do things that they forget to document.

Lastly Goals & Objectives need to be flexible enough to be adapted to and unfolding situation. The process of Implementing Salesforce CRM we may find that some Goals & Objectives work and others no longer serve us. Knowing when to persevere or when to quit is as important as the goals & objectives themselves. Thomas Edison tried thousands of prototypes of his light bulb he knew when quit and move on till he found the one that worked. In addition, other better opportunities may arise, be careful here I have seen folks so busy chasing shiny objects that the core goals never got done resulting in disaster.