{"id":27668,"date":"2019-08-22T19:18:00","date_gmt":"2019-08-23T00:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/salesv4.aligntoday.com\/blog\/how-to-pick-a-smart-quarterly-priority\/"},"modified":"2019-08-22T19:18:00","modified_gmt":"2019-08-23T00:18:00","slug":"how-to-pick-a-smart-quarterly-priority","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aligntoday.com\/blog\/how-to-pick-a-smart-quarterly-priority\/","title":{"rendered":"Webinar Recap: “How to Pick a SMART Quarterly Priority” with Herb Cogliano"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

For Align\u2019s August coach webinar, we were joined by\u00a0Herb Cogliano<\/a>, managing partner and coach at\u00a0Aspire Growth Advisors<\/a>. Herb has more than 30 years experience as an entrepreneur, both as CEO of Sullivan and Cogliano, a staffing solutions firm named to the Inc. 5000 multiple times, and more recently as a\u00a0Scaling Up<\/a>\u00a0certified business coach.\u00a0

A central part of Herb\u2019s experience has been helping organizations develop the priorities and creating the focus that can drive a business forward. So naturally, we were thrilled when Herb approached us with the topic of \u201cHow to pick a SMART Quarterly Priority.\u00a0

One Focus
<\/strong>
Herb agreed with\u00a0past webinar presenters that developing a single focus for your entire company in a quarter is critical to creating focus toward achieving a long-term vision. Herb believes this can best be done by creating annual targets and developing a quarterly priority that moves the business towards those targets.\u00a0

Herb started with the example of Facebook. In the face of their upcoming IPO, CEO Mark Zuckerberg focused the company strategy not on boosting short-term financial results to bolster stock price but on developing a mobile app. While this meant an initial dip in price following the IPO, as the mobile revolution continued, Facebook was uniquely positioned in the competitive landscape to dominate the market.

Getting SMART<\/strong>

<\/strong>In the companies he coaches, Herb says developing this priority starts with establishing annual targets based on where a business wants to be in a year. In his business, this meant an annual revenue growth target at double the industry average. From there he developed aggressive, but achievable, quarterly sales targets that could power the target growth.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While the connection between revenue and sales is direct, priorities to support a revenue target do not need to be tied to sales. As in the Facebook example, a quarter\u2019s top priority could involve the development of a new product line that will drive other metrics later on.<\/p>\n

Herb also recommends balancing critical numbers. In other words, a drive to increase revenue should not come at the expense of monitoring other business critical metrics like customer satisfaction and margins.

The entire webinar can be viewed below and the slides can be downloaded here.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n