Capstone Sales Development Blog

Posted by Jim Lee Tuesday, August 4, 2009 @ 9:40 a.m.

Once you’ve agreed upon a Goldilocks objective with your boss (not too aggressive for your tastes, not too lame for your boss’ tastes – it’s just right), how do you go about making that objective come to life? Hopefully you followed the advice of a previous post on this blog (see Setting Objectives, dated 7/6/09), and now you’re ready to put in place what’s needed to ensure success.

 

Allow me to use a sports analogy here. Even someone with only a cursory knowledge of baseball knows that the objective of the New York Yankees is to be not only the premier franchise in major league baseball, but the premier franchise in all of professional sports. In order to achieve that objective, they set a goal. The only goal that would lead to such a lofty objective is to win world championships. Regardless of how many expensive superstars they sign, how expensive their new ballpark is, or how many headlines their owner generates, if they don’t first win championships, they will never attain their objective. So every February when they report for spring training, they have one goal – to win the World Series.

 

Once they have their goal in place, they must then develop a strategy to achieve that goal. Their strategy is to sign and/or develop the best players available and surround them with the best coaching and facilities. They must then develop measures which tell them whether they’re successfully implementing their strategy. Their measures include pitching, offensive, and defensive statistics and ultimately wins and losses.

 

In order to turn your sales objective into reality, you should develop your own OGSM, or
Objective, Goal, Strategy, Measure. Let’s say you sell something truly glamorous for a living, Pampers Disposable Diapers. An objective for your business might be to attain share leadership with your biggest retailer. Once your boss and your customer agree, you now need to determine how to achieve this.

 

Start with setting goals that lead to accomplishing the objective. You might start by determining a share of the market that would be necessary to overtake the current leading brand. After you confirm that this share is achievable, decide the strategy you intend to employ to hit this share. For example, will you achieve this goal by selling new distribution, more ads, better pricing, or better shelf space? Or, will you pursue all these options? Whose involvement do you need with your customer? What kind of marketing, consumer research, logistical, or other help do you need from within your own company?

 

Finally, how will you measure your progress? What levels of distribution, advertising, pricing, and shelf space are needed? On what timing do you want accomplish each of these elements? You would also probably measure your success against your share objectives (e.g. get from a 25 to a 27 share within 3 months, from a 27 to a 28 share within six months, from a 28 to a 30 share within nine months, and from a 30 to a 31 share within 12 months).

 

My experience is that this OGSM process is thorough enough to allow you to critically think through all the steps necessary to accomplish your objectives while being flexible enough to apply to any business opportunity. If it can work for the Yankees, it can work for you as well.

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