QMS Sales Goals & Quality Objectives

[Edward Reesor]

They may have been considered "anemic" because they could have been framed around the SMART aspects of goals (as one example). The SMART characteristics of goals include information on:

• Specific: Well defined, clear, and unambiguous
• Measurable: With specific criteria that measure your progress towards the accomplishment of the goal
• Achievable: Attainable and not impossible to achieve
• Realistic: Within reach, realistic, and relevant to your goal
• Timely: With a clearly defined timeline, including a starting date and a target date. The purpose is to create urgency.

I suggest revisiting your goals and determine if more information could be added to the statement. It is designed to be less vague and really make a statement of where you want to go and when you want to be there. A personal example could be to compare "I want to visit Europe next year", versus "To visit at least three countries in Europe for a two week stay on or before December, 2019". If you create your goal using these criteria, they might be considered less "anemic".

 

[Farley.0]

What about the following quality objectives for your sales function?

• Salespeople will not lie, fib or mislead customers about product performance and delivery dates. (I know, I know, but that is a stretch goal )
• No customer dissatisfaction due to sales misinformation
• Accurate quotes issued in less than 48 hours

What is this utopia you speak of?
The third item is actually not too unrealistic.
Thank you for the links!

 

[Farley.0]

They may have been considered "anemic" because they could have been framed around the SMART aspects of goals (as one example). The SMART characteristics of goals include information on:

• Specific: Well defined, clear, and unambiguous
• Measurable: With specific criteria that measure your progress towards the accomplishment of the goal
• Achievable: Attainable and not impossible to achieve
• Realistic: Within reach, realistic, and relevant to your goal
• Timely: With a clearly defined timeline, including a starting date and a target date. The purpose is to create urgency.

I suggest revisiting your goals and determine if more information could be added to the statement. It is designed to be less vague and really make a statement of where you want to go and when you want to be there. A personal example could be to compare "I want to visit Europe next year", versus "To visit at least three countries in Europe for a two week stay on or before December, 2019". If you create your goal using these criteria, they might be considered less "anemic".

My role in this activity is to procure ideas from the process owners and frame them as best I can. Needless to say, some individuals don't provide me much to work with and dictating objectives and goals to them is not my responsibility. The measurable facet of our Sales objectives are where most of the deficiencies lie. Is deficient a more acceptable term than anemic for you? Apologies for the color. I'll make sure I dress my words in an appropriate shade of beige going forward. I came here for an exchange of ideas and information, but I guess everything's some sort of misdirected competition these day. Thank you for contributing though.

 

[Ninja]

Not sure what the "misdirected competition" line means...

If your role is to frame ideas into stated formal goals, fine. The ideas you get from the process owners have to meet some minimum level to even be usable..."We'll sell more" is a pretty lame goal deserving a "duh" response. While "SMART" may be cliche anymore...the thoughts behind it remain valid...

You have to measure a goal in order to know if it was or was not met.
You have to know what the goal is (Specific) in order to know whether or not is was met.
If your Sales Mgmt and Upper Mgmt are fine with anemic goals...that's their call...may or may not be your fight (sounds like not).

If I was in the position that I presume you are, and the goal handed to me is "Sell more", I would simply push back softly "Is there a minimum increase, or just $1 more is good?", "Does it matter if it's existing customers, new customers, or just the year overall?".
If the answer is $1 more for the year overall...you're done here.

Your OP calls the old goals anemic. They are. You can either try to do something about that, through influence, authority or borrowed authority, or not...saying that it isn't yours to dictate. It's a clear fence, choose one side or the other and go for it. None of us can change the world today...pick which little piece of it you can improve and then decide if it's worth it today...

Good luck!

 

[Sidney Vianna]

@Farley.0 your quest is a challenging one and we all wish you success. Hopefully the top management of the organization is enlightened enough to realize that sales, while a critical business process, can also be a major source of customer dissatisfaction, leading to excessive customer turnover, a costly proposition.

Customer-centric sales (sustainable sales) needs to understand what are the risks to customer satisfaction emanating from their activities and mitigating them. Understanding those risks and creating measurable objectives to monitor such behaviors is what I would be doing in this case. Only your organization knows the particulars of the sales function dysfunction (pun intended) towards customer dissatisfaction. You have to analyze the data and react accordingly. For example, if data shows that customers resent untimely quotes, create an objective to address that.

Good luck. And keep us posted.

 

[Farley.0]

@Farley.0 your quest is a challenging one and we all wish you success. Hopefully the top management of the organization is enlightened enough to realize that sales, while a critical business process, can also be a major source of customer dissatisfaction, leading to excessive customer turnover, a costly proposition.

Customer-centric sales (sustainable sales) needs to understand what are the risks to customer satisfaction emanating from their activities and mitigating them. Understanding those risks and creating measurable objectives to monitor such behaviors is what I would be doing in this case. Only your organization knows the particulars of the sales function dysfunction (pun intended) towards customer dissatisfaction. You have to analyze the data and react accordingly. For example, if data shows that customers resent untimely quotes, create an objective to address that.

Good luck. And keep us posted.

The good news is our company is undergoing a positive cultural change, albeit at a sluggish pace. Unfortunately, there is still a faction that feels formal objectives and goals are "things the ISO guys do". Formulating objectives in such an environment while addressing risk, satisfying standard requirements, accurately reflecting actual practices, and promoting customer satisfaction is no small feat.
Thanks again for the perspective.

 

[Ninja]

Unfortunately, there is still a faction that feels formal objectives and goals are "things the ISO guys do".

Is it possible that your company simply uses different parlance? Remove the words "ISO" and "Goal" and "Objective" entirely from the vocabulary...don't remove the purpose, just those words...Surely your salespeople have a "quota" or "metric" that they are measured on...everyone does.
When you get your performance review, you are measured against expectations...what are the performance expectations for salespeople, the department as a whole? Those are the "goals"...

Can't tell you how many times I've seen the vocabulary be the main thing in the way...

 

[Tagin]

Our registrar recently commented that it could be useful to think of QOs in terms of the Balanced Scorecard, which looks at the organization in four quadrants:

• Financial
• Internal Processes
• Customer Relationship
• Education & Growth

This allows for QOs that are not necessarily tied 1:1 to a specific process, yet can be convincingly shown to an auditor that the organization is improving in multiple dimensions.

Also, with 9001:2015, 6.2.1 lists multiple conditions that QOs have to meet, and finding a QO on a per-process basis that meets all the conditions could be difficult. I think the Balanced Scorecard approach (or something analogous) could make it easier to find relevant QOs. We're going to be going through this challenge of finding new QOs soon, so this is still theoretical for us.

Edit: See What is the Balanced Scorecard?

 

[Farley.0]

Is it possible that your company simply uses different parlance? Remove the words "ISO" and "Goal" and "Objective" entirely from the vocabulary...don't remove the purpose, just those words...Surely your salespeople have a "quota" or "metric" that they are measured on...everyone does.
When you get your performance review, you are measured against expectations...what are the performance expectations for salespeople, the department as a whole? Those are the "goals"...

Can't tell you how many times I've seen the vocabulary be the main thing in the way...

No, our issues transcend semantics. Some process "owners" are averse to externally-imposed structure, i.e. standard requirements. Many of the requisite activities take place, though some find formalization of such tedious. And we don't conduct performance reviews, though I wish we would.

 

[Farley.0]

Our registrar recently commented that it could be useful to think of QOs in terms of the Balanced Scorecard, which looks at the organization in four quadrants:

• Financial
• Internal Processes
• Customer Relationship
• Education & Growth

This allows for QOs that are not necessarily tied 1:1 to a specific process, yet can be convincingly shown to an auditor that the organization is improving in multiple dimensions.

Also, with 9001:2015, 6.2.1 lists multiple conditions that QOs have to meet, and finding a QO on a per-process basis that meets all the conditions could be difficult. I think the Balanced Scorecard approach (or something analogous) could make it easier to find relevant QOs. We're going to be going through this challenge of finding new QOs soon, so this is still theoretical for us.

Edit: See What is the Balanced Scorecard?

Thank you for the perspective and the link!