Business Services
Goal getters
How to set and monitor objectives
By Carolyn LaWell
Smart Business Tampa Bay | April 2009
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Dave Zillig, president and co-founder
DAZSER
It’s not many bosses who dangle the possibility of an annual cruise in front of employees for a job well done, but that’s one way Dave Zillig ignites performance at DAZSER.
Zillig and Stephen Roesch — who founded DAZSER to operate JaniKing International Inc. franchises — have found it’s easier to motivate employees when there’s a bright light — or, in their case, a cruise ship — at the end of the tunnel. To keep the eyes of DAZSER’s 60 employees on the ball, the pair has devised a goal-setting and monitoring system with daily objectives.
“How do you define a good or bad month? It’s very hard to be objective about it,” says Zillig, who serves as president. “We wanted a more objective way about it.”
He attributes DAZSER’s growth to outlining a clear framework of objectives for employees to work with and closely monitoring the results. In 2008, the franchisor of the commercial cleaning company posted revenue of $40.8 million.
Smart Business spoke with Zillig about how to set and monitor goals.
Define a target. You have to have the end in sight. First, what do you want to accomplish, and then work backward.
Most business owners know what the target is. We knew what we wanted to accomplish each year, and we worked backward form that, what that would require in terms of activity levels. All of this can be regulated to formulas.
Take the target, the goal, and break it down to the lowest common denominator, down right to what’s going to have to be done on a daily basis to achieve that.
We’ll track each day as to how many proposals were delivered by each rep, how many quote calls were made, how many sales in terms of contracts and dollars.
If we don’t think it’s important enough to measure it, (the employees) are not going to think it’s important.
Get every employee involved. Whatever the goal is, everyone has to contribute to that result. It can’t just be sales. Whatever the target is, I think you’ve got to involve multiple departments; otherwise it just doesn’t achieve that sense of teamwork you’re trying to accomplish.
Sales, operations, regional manager, customer service — they all have measurable results that we can determine.
Everybody buys in because it’s very doable. It gives them a structure, a framework to work within that they know if they follow that plan, they’ll be successful.
