When trying to decide how to approach your CRM implementation, it can be helpful to apply the GOST (goals, objectives, strategy, and tactics) model to help provide some direction. Using this model will provide clarity into both how, and more importantly why, you are implementing CRM.
What Is GOST?
If you are unfamiliar with the GOST model, here is a quick primer on each element:
Goals: A high-level description of the outcome(s) you wish to achieve.
Objectives: These are specific, measurable outcomes that define your goal.
Strategy: This is the approach you will take to achieve your goal.
Tactics: Tactics are the tools you use in pursuing an objective associated with a strategy.
If all of that is a little confusing, don’t worry. We’re going to walk you through an example of applying this model to a CRM implementation next.
What’s Your Goal?
On the face of it, you may be thinking, “My goal is to implement CRM.” But the truth is, no organization implements CRM just to be able to say they have it. Most likely, you’ve purchased CRM to enable a broader goal, such as increasing sales.
But increasing sales isn’t the whole picture. Why does your company want to increase sales? To increase revenue. It looks and sounds obvious when we spell it out, but spelling things out is the exact point of using the GOST model.
So, the goal is to increase revenue.
Creating Measurable Objectives
To keep this example simple, we’re only going to define a single objective. In a real-world application, however, you may define several objectives in order to achieve your stated goal of increasing revenue.
The most crucial aspect of creating an objective is that it is measurable. For example, to increase revenue, one objective might be to call more leads. But that’s not enough, because “call more leads” is not measurable. To make your objective measurable, it needs to be quantified.
If your sales reps are each averaging fifty calls per day, and you’ve calculated that they need to make an additional ten to fifteen calls per day to hit your revenue goals, then they need to average approximately 25% more calls per day. That’s a measurable, quantified objective.
The objective is to increase call volume by 25% per rep
Thinking Strategically
So far, we know that the goal is to increase revenue, and we need to increase each sales rep’s daily call volume by 25%. How are we going to make that happen? One strategy would be for your sales manager to stand behind each rep for part of the day and shout encouragement at them in the hopes it inspires them to work faster.
That’s probably not a good strategy, but it is a strategy.
Another strategy might be to try and streamline your sales process so that your reps spend less time hunting for prospects and more time on the phone making calls.
The strategy is to streamline the sales process.
Deploying Your Tactics
Tactics are where the rubber finally meets the road. Your tactics are the actual tools you deploy to enable your strategy and objectives.
In our example, we need to increase each sales rep’s daily call volume. To do that, we’ve decided to try and streamline the sales process to free our reps from time-consuming tasks and repurpose that time for calls.
Guess what? CRM is an excellent tool for doing that very thing. What a coincidence, right? Of course, deploying a CRM system isn’t the only tactic that you’ll need to use to accomplish your objective. What’s important here is that you now have a clear picture of why you are implementing a CRM system.
So, to complete our GOST example, one of our tactics is to implement a CRM system.
Putting It All Together
What’s great about using the GOST model is that it’s applicable regardless of where you are on the company org chart.
If you’re a sales manager who has been tasked with increasing your organization’s sales volume, you could take this very example into your boss’s office tomorrow and say something to the effect of:
“To increase revenue, we need to increase each of our rep’s call volume by 25% per day. The best way to do that is by streamlining the current sales process to reduce friction and time spent in non-call tasks. One of the best tools to do that is a CRM system.”
Many organizations make the mistake of first buying a CRM system and then deciding which problems they want it to solve after the fact. That’s a recipe for a bad CRM implementation. By first defining your goals, objectives, strategy, and tactics, you will be able to hit the ground running with your CRM implementation.
