Back when Ernie Wallerstein Jr. was a salesman, the vice president of sales offered him some advice that has gone on to guide his leadership: Identify a potential client’s top three issues and make sure you could solve at least two of them.
“I’ve morphed it into more of a business concept, where you lay out three objectives and you need to map to them, because if you’re not, you’re probably not doing something that’s going to benefit the company in the long run,” says Wallerstein, now president of Zeacom Inc., the U.S. operations of the unified communications software provider.
That process helps keep his 50 employees aligned to core objectives as they continue growing U.S. revenue — which makes up more than half of total global revenue for the company.
“Be sure you clearly articulate what the goals and objectives are, and then make sure that the efforts that are going on map to those objectives,” he says.
Smart Business spoke to Wallerstein about mapping employees’ goals to your company’s initiatives.
Explain goals. I look at what our revenue goals [from the board] are. I look at what our personnel goals are: How many people do we want to add to address that? Then I look at
what our position in the industry is: Who do we want to be at the end of the year? Those are the factors I use to set my goals.
I don’t think you ever set more than three. People can digest three. You need more than two because people are driven by different things, but if you get much more than three primary objectives, it’s hard for people to map to it.
When you lay out these goals and objectives, you have to drop down a layer. You have to articulate [goals] to your different functional groups so they understand how they map to it.
Everybody needs to know where you’re trying to get to. If you put a travel and expense limitation on the company, they need to know why. It’s not because I’m trying to get five more shekels in the board’s pocket. It’s because I’m trying to hit this revenue goal and this profitability goal. We try to hit this profitability goal so we can afford those three extra head count that are going to help us hit our top-line revenue objective. That top-line revenue objective is going to move us up a tier in the industry so we’re a more formidable player for the large companies.
I try to make that communication more face-to-face than through e-mail. When you’re talking about the key goals of the company, that is something that you’re delivering in front of people and allow them to respond to it in front of you.