Jermaine Edwards breaks down how to set goals that actually move customers toward results. A goal must be testable (removing it slows progress), logically sequenced (each one unlocks the next), and tied to what matters now. He walks through a revenue example where talking to 20 customers leads to proposals that boost revenue 20-25%.
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Hey, it's Jermaine Edwards, your customer growth guide. If you're new, welcome. If you're old, welcome back to the fold. This is video number 2 of the Customer Mastery Series. We're looking at 3 core components that define the likelihood of you driving results consistently and repeatedly with your most important customers. We're looking at goals today, but in video number 1, we looked at outcomes. So go there first if you haven't seen that video, then meet me back here to talk about goals right afterwards. So let's talk about goals. If I was to ask you about goals, I imagine you'd have a range of different things that you'd be considering, such as acronyms that we've heard before, such as SMART, and other things like that. I want to go a little more granular, a little more detailed, so we can really pull out and extract how to craft a really clear and powerful goal that actually achieves results or helps you achieve results based on the first formula for achieving outcomes we looked at in video number 1. So first thing we're going to look at here is the what. What specifically is a goal and how should we look at this? Well, the first component of this I'd like you to consider, and it's really goals are milestones. They are specific checkmarks that allow you to see if you're closer or getting closer to achieving the specific outcome or result that you want. We take the boat down here going from A to B. What we want is for each specific goal to give us an indication to how close we are to the outcome. And that leads us to point number 2, which is we want to make sure that every goal needs to be testable, meaning that at each point we need to be able to assess the power and quality of that specific goal and if it really achieves the things that we want. So a question that you might ask when you're actually formulating goals is, is this specific goal— if removed, does this goal impact the quality of getting to the outcome, or the quality of the outcome, or the specific result, or the how quickly we get to the result? If we remove the goal, would it impact the quality of the result or how quickly we got to the result? If the answer is actually it wouldn't impact much at all, then it probably isn't the right goal for you to chase. So it needs to be testable, and asking these questions like this helps you to do that. The next piece there is it needs to be logical. It needs to be logical, meaning it needs to be a consistent methodical way in which the goals are actually tracked. An example being this: each specific goal that you set needs to be logically consistent. Meaning once you achieve one, it should make achieving two either easier, or it should give you access then to different resources for you to achieve two or three sequentially. So if your goal is to get to this specific outcome, which is, say, a revenue goal with a particular customer, goal number one, once completed— meaning goal number one could be having specific conversations with your— with 20 different customers— should then give you access to goal number two, which is to establish strategic proposals with each of those customers to raise their revenue or potential opportunities by 20-25%. So as soon as you achieve goal number 1, guess what? Now you have goal number 2. It's easier for you to do because your first goal of having the conversations allowed you now to do goal number 2, which is to create the actual proposals. Hope that makes sense. So that's the logical flow. It has to be logically consistent. Milestones needs to be testable, and it needs to be logically consistent. So let's talk about the why. We've looked at the what and the whole idea of the milestones being testable and logical. Let's look at the why and how we connect those things together. So the first part of the why is importance. So why is the specific goal important to achieve? The reason why we ask this question is not all goals are created equal, meaning there are some goals that help us to get to a particular place faster than others. So we need to know why it's important for us to achieve. The second part to this is looking at relevance. Now, why is this goal important to achieve now? Now, it could still be important, don't get me wrong, but actually, is it important right now for us to achieve? That's really a really helpful question to ask because your time and resource is limited, and so you want to focus on those things that get you to the result right now and not those things that get you the result at a later time. So you want to determine the importance and then the the relevance. Why is it important? And is this important now to achieve based on where we're trying to go and the outcome we're trying to actually deliver? So that's what it is about goals. If we look at this, we can see it's very rich and very specific and methodical. If you follow this process, what you'll have is a much more clear, much more grounded, much more confident set of goals that you can trust that gets you closer to achieving the kind of outcome that you want. There is a downloadable sheet that you can access in the notes below. And from there, take action, and I'll see you in video number 3 where we look at strategy and connecting these two things together.
