Goals Management: How to Create Professional Goals

Many of the world’s most successful companies leverage one of the major goal methodologies to provide a framework for achieving success. Goals give employers a  means to evaluate an employee’s value and provide an employee with guidance on what is expected of them. Goals are equally beneficial to both parties and creating a framework that makes sense for your business is vital. We’ll discuss some overall recommendations for for creating professional goals today, along with a more specific plan for one of the most universal positions in business, the Sales Development Representative.

Since we like checklists, let’s begin with six recommendations for creating your professional goals:

  1. Use a methodology that your organization is comfortable with, for example:  MBOs, OKRs, KPIs or SMART goals
  2. Create 3-5 clear, specific and measurable goals that can be answered with ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ at the end of the measured time period
  3. Set a time period for accomplishing the activity: daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly. If it’s a project, break it down into parts that you can accomplish within the alloted time frame.
  4. Depending on methodology selected, decide if you want the goal to be aspirational or realistic
  5. Decide if goals would be transparent or private.Will you share the goals company-wide or kept between employee and manager only?
  6. Optional: Try to include a goal related to your personal career development – include a meeting with a mentor, a training class, or job rotation at another department.

Now that we have a basis for how to create overall professional goals, let’s apply this to a specific job role. Of course, all of these may be modified to fit your exact needs.

goals management

Here are some example goals for your Sales Development Representative:

  1. Activity: Research and add 500 new prospects to the CRM weekly
  2. Activity: Make 50 outbound calls a day to prospects
  3. Activity: Send 50 outbound emails a day to prospects
  4. Activity: Hold 5 quality conversations a day
  5. Outcome: Set up 5 intro meetings a week
  6. Outcome: Create 5 qualified opportunities per week
  7. Shadow an account executive at 2 demos this month
  8. Take an inside sales class

Now that we have our goals, what are the required skills and tools that the ideal Sales Development Representative would have:

Skills:

Tools:

A likely career path for a Sales Development Representative would include the following positions: Junior SDR , Associate SDR, Senior SDR, SDR Manager, SDR to Inside Sales Account Executive (AE, ISR), and Outside Sales Rep (Enterprise Sales Rep)

The average tenure of a Sales Development Representative is 14 years and it is suggested that promotions into one of the above career path roles takes place at 1.3 years.

No matter the type of business or the role within that business it is vital to have a framework for your professional goals. There are a variety of platforms on the market that address this need, including ours. If you’re interested in a free 30-day supported trial, click here and we’ll guide you through the set-up process and ensure you can begin using our goals management module ASAP.

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