You can say your goal for this year is 20m ARR

Or you can say…

We transformed into a scalable, global, enterprise-grade, solution that became the default workflow of our users, resulting in 5 case studies that shrank our sales cycle to 6 months and grew our average client value to >500k resulting in 20m ARR.

A goal is an empty number. it is an indication of a final state you’d like to achieve. It has minimal guidance, direction or inspiration in it.

A destination, on the other hand, is a snapshot of reality where you have achieved your goal. It’s a vision people can hang on to for direction and inspiration as they pursue the goal.

A destination drives cross-team focus and accountability

So you have a team of 80 people and their goal is 20M ARR. Now what?

Who needs to do what for the team to reach the goal?
What needs to change in reality for us to hit the goal?
How will we know we are going in the right direction?
What will guide us back when the going gets tough and we lose our track?

Think of it for a second… 20M ARR might inform the sales team. But what about the rest of the teams? What are they accountable for? What is their role in hitting the “number goal”? It isn’t so intuitive.

This is where having a clear focus sentence that captures your destination vs. simply a goal is a gamechanger.

Try reading the sample focus sentence again, this time I highlighted specific words:

We transformed into a scalable, global, enterprise-grade, solution that became the default workflow of our users, resulting in 5 case studies that shrank our sales cycle to 6 months and grew our average client value to >500k resulting in 20m ARR.

Can you see how the vision emerges from the words? Isn’t that beautiful? The main objectives and themes for the coming year literally flow out of the words.

But most importantly, each team, not just sales, has a clear and impactful role to play in reaching that destination.

Words matter. Word inspire. Words focus us

Each word in your focus sentence is a hook for inspiration and accountability. Because now the number 20M ARR is suddenly related to a cross-company challenge every single person in the company will need to be involved in if we want to hit our goal.

Let’s look at a few of the keywords in our focus sentence for example…

Scalable, global: If in order to reach 20M ARR we MUST scale and become global then every team has a role to play. The product team, customer success, ops, engineering, sales, HR. Every teams will need to come with their plan and sub-goals to ensure we are scalable and global.

Enterprise-grade solution: This is a beautiful one. Because it requires a delicate dance of culture, process, and business. It is the sum of the changes teams MUST compete in order to unlock the rare ability to serve the highly demanding, customized, secure, compliant needs an enterprise client while maintaining the agility, speed and freedom to develop cross-client, strategic products.

Default workflow of our users: One of the best ways to retain your enterprise clients is becoming the default workflow of their users. But how will you do that? The beauty is that there is no single team in your company that can achieve that. It will have to be a coordinated effort led by the product team, promoted and nurtured by customer success and weaved into the business review process by the sales team. EVERYONE must work together to achieve that piece puzzle and get us closer to our destination.

5 case studies: Sales must secure contracts that permit and even include a case study clause. The client success team must ensure we have clear success metrics defined. BI team needs to ensure we can actually measure our success metrics and finally, Product/Engineering teams need to deliver an offering that actually drives those success metrics. It’s a team effort!

Do you see the effect? It’s so much clearer than a number goal, without sacrificing the goal. Each team is connected to the goal (20M ARR) but at the same time knows their role and, most importantly, understands it’s a team effort. They have a clear line of sight to their goal.

Does your team know where you’re going?

The simplest way to know if your team knows your destination is picking 5 random people across your teams and asking them 3 simple questions:

Where do we want to be at the end of this year?
What are the 3 big things we MUST achieve to get there?
What is your role in getting us there?

If you’re not getting clear answers STOP! Please don’t go on with your 2020 plans as if everything is OK. If your team can’t answer these 3 questions it means they don’t understand where you are going.

Can you expect people to follow you when they don’t know where you are going?

So. Take the time. The destination is in you, you just need to “carve it out”.

First define a clear destination you, yourself, can see. Then ask yourself... Do I have a clear line of sight? Can I see us get there? What blocks our way? What paths must we carve to get there?

Then, when you have a clear line of sight to your destination, weave it all into a single Focus Sentence your team can hold onto as they fight to reach their goals… Because there is nothing more powerful than a team that wakes up each day with a clear vision of where they are going, working together to unlock that vision!

Have a great 2020 :-)

Why an orange is an orange even when it’s a lemon (and the secret power of the words “I think”)