A primary goal of every manager is to keep themselves and their staff motivated. Whether they provide incentives like bonuses or vacations or create an environment filled with positivity, managers need to find new, inventive ways to keep their staff consistently focused on their goals.
But accomplishing this isn’t as easy as it seems. For one, certain employees would prefer to have incremental goals as oppose to a single large one and for another, some employees like to get a day by day report on their progress towards their goals, which isn’t always readily offered by managers. So what tools could managers use to resolve these issues to keep their staff motivated? In my opinion, one viable solution is Customizable Dashboards offered by some Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions.
What are Dashboards?
Simply put, dashboards provide a real-time snapshot of an organization’s key metrics. They can come in the form of funnels, graphs, charts, and lists and consist of data pulled directly from the CRM system. The dashboard could be structured for a combination of sales, marketing, support and inventory-related data and ultimately provides both a realistic and timely understanding of a company’s progress, performance and effectiveness.
The Power of the Visual
In implementing a CRM system in an organization, managers should take the time to clearly and concisely map out each employee’s goals and set up realistic expectations for their performance. Once that is completed and the team begins to actively use the system, all of their activities including new meetings, appointments, progression through the sales cycle and so forth, is dynamically captured in the CRM solution.
These activities can then be pulled directly into a customizable dashboard to show a visual representation of their performance. For example, managers can set up a dashboard that shows the top performing sales reps so that they can quickly understand who is excelling in the company versus who is falling short. Apart from managerial use, employees can set up dashboards for themselves to understand in real-time what their strengths are and what areas they need improvement. This serves as an excellent source of motivation and an effective way to visually understand one’s personal progression towards the company’s goals.
Making the Team Accountable
While some people respond well to when managers host one-on-one meetings about performance, others feel that extra push when they can visually see how they are performing against their manager’s expectations. More importantly, the visual display makes that individual feel directly accountable for reaching that specific target.
Using the dashboards offered by CRM solutions is an excellent method for setting up accountability in an organization and allowing each employee to monitor their effectiveness. With the dashboards, an employee can set up a bar graph demonstrating their contribution to the company’s revenue targets and thus take accountability for it. When that bar turns from red to green as a result of their extra hard work and initiative, their confidence in themselves and their ability to contribute to the organization is skyrocketed.
Though managers may employ of a variety of methods to keep their team focused and committed to a goal, gaining a visual representation of both a team and individual’s performance as provided by a CRM solutions’ customizable dashboards, is an extremely powerful source of motivation. Ultimately, dashboards allow organizations to drill down on important information impacting their business. Additionally, the dashboards can help contribute to making a company more proactive and productive at acting upon areas of weakness and as well more motivated to achieve their goals.
