3 Ways to Determine Success on Your Own Terms

With much uncertainty in the marketplace right now, it’s important to adjust not only your sales, management, and operational strategies, but your mindset around how your company, and you yourself, define success right now. When we think about the meaning of success in “normal” times, a new business would be immensely satisfied if in the first year the operation returns a profit. On the other hand, a more established company may expect to see a specified rate of growth year over year. So how do you define success during a global pandemic?

Defining what success means to you, and establishing goals based upon these criteria, can be an important step in monitoring your business’ development and making productive decisions based on the criteria that matter the most to you. Here are a few different ways that you can consider defining or redefining your success.

1. Sales success on a personal and team level

Everyone in the company has a distinct role to play in the success of the organization. Sales professionals, in particular, are responsible for direct revenue generation, but there are many different ways of defining sales success besides just dollars sold. If you’re struggling to close right now, make sure you have goals that outline how you will define success on a personal level. This might include statistics such as:

• The number of calls you make every day
• The number of conversions with new potential customers, whether they result in a next step or not
• The ability to maintain accounts and keep customers
• The number of positive check-ins with current clients

These goals should also be discussed with your manager so that you can start to formulate goals together as a team. By discussing these ideas together, you can start to gain a more complete picture of what you can achieve as an organization.

2. Brand success

Establishing a meaningful, cohesive brand is an important part of growing a company. A strong brand is the reputation that precedes you wherever you market yourself. Customers will recognize your name and logo when they come across your brand, anywhere from social media to online advertising on their favorite websites. When you have built a strong, positive brand, this simple recognition can help you build the relationship further with prospects and convince them that you have something to offer.

There are a number of different factors you can use to start to judge the success of your brand reach.

• Social media monitoring for brand mentions and discussions of your products and services
• Reading review sites to see what people comment when discussing your brand
• Watching the social response to your postings and activities
• Monitoring how well the brand understands its target audience

3. Teamwork goals

For any organization to successfully grow, teamwork is an important part. A team that functions well together will be able to work with greater efficiency and productivity. Dividing tasks and working towards united goals will become more intuitive. A strong and united team can also help to create an environment where people feel more comfortable making suggestions and thinking outside the box, and it can also increase loyalty.

• How effective is communication within the group?
• How well are the different members of the team performing their jobs?
• Do team members put in the effort to maintain a strong team unity? It can be dangerous if members start expecting others to pick up their slack, resulting in resentment and poor performance. Everyone must be willing to put forth a strong effort to keep the group moving forward.

Understanding your organization’s success is not always a straightforward calculation of effort compared to return. There are a number of different aspects you can look at throughout your business that will help you better understand your progress and allow you to define success on your own terms.