What is the goal of your company?
If you haven't sat down and explicitly asked and answered this question, there's a strong chance you may be encouraging sales behavior that doesn't support your company goals.
A goal should be one or two sentences long, define the general services and products to be sold, to what type of industries, and minimum growth and profit performance. This should be a goal that customers, vendors and employees can refer to and measure themselves and you against.
When defining your goals, there are a few things to keep in mind. First, make sure your goals are not too narrow, or too broad. "To make money" or "to sell more" are too broad because they don't provide any real direction for achieving those goals, while "to sell left-handed monkey wrenches to right-handed plumbers" is too narrow because the results are significantly limited.
Second, separate your personal goals from the company goals if you have an ownership stake in the company. An economic entity follows the rules of economics, and in most cases emotions will not count.
Knowing that your company has a purpose, a good reality check would be to see if your customers feel it is a worthwhile mission, and whether your employees and vendors will agree to support it. Your quality teams should have a chance to pick it apart first so they can see how it applies to their daily work. It also gives those vendors that care a chance to see where your company is headed.
You may find out that you have defined your products too narrowly, like the railroads failing to realize they were in the transportation business until the truck companies almost took half their business away. If you need to modify your company's goal, do it; and remember all decisions made should agree with the goal.
Rusty Duncan is the founder and Chief Markets Analyst for Industrial Market Information. For more information on the product line analysis IMI can provide, please contact IMI or complete an information request form .