What Works

The Nitty Gritty * What Jessica Fialkovich’s daily life looks like as President and Cofounder of Transworld Business Advisors—Rocky Mountain, investor, and nonprofit board of director * How Jessica uses the bottom up approach for setting company goals * How goals are established among team members and how those goals influence yearly company goals * Why you should think about your business not as an extension of your identity but as a financial asset — and ways to shift your mindset * Jessica’s tips for efficient team meetings Jessica Fialkovich knows what it takes to start and grow a successful small business. And, she knows how to buy and sell them. Today, Jessica’s the President and Co-Founder of Transworld Business Advisors—Rocky Mountain and she strategically leads and supports her team. In this episode, Jessica outlines exactly how she and her team set the yearly company goals. She also describes goal setting is a personal process — and how she works with each team member to create goals that work to motivate and inspire them. We release new episodes of What Works every week. Subscribe on iTunes so you never miss an episode. Setting and establishing yearly company goals “I look at all of my team’s goals individually and then I roll them up into overall company goals. We usually establish somewhere between 3-5 goals for the year. Then we establish an overall theme.” — Jessica Fialkovich Together with her team, Jessica sets a handful of yearly goals for the company. What do they want to accomplish? Who do they want to help? What’s their upcoming focus? Right now, Jessica and her team are setting goals for 2019 because they like to have them honed in on by the end of the year. As a team, they decide on a yearly theme as well. Their goal for 2019 is to take really good care of the buyers. “This is an area where we really can improve,” Jessica says. Once the goals are set, Jessica summarizes them into one company document which is distributed to the entire team. Empowering team members to set goals “Most of the team are salespeople and salespeople are very goal-oriented to begin with. I talk to them about them running their own mini business underneath our business. As much as we do well, and as long as their business is increasing, they’re going to do well. Their financial rewards are tied directly to their performance.” — Jessica Fialkovich Not only do you want to set goals, but you also want to empower your team members to reach them. Jessica keeps her team focused by hosting quarterly kick-off meetings to do just that. Every team member creates between 3-5 personal metrics for the year, including: * What is their gross commission goal? * How many deals do they want to close? * Is there a specific industry or niche they want to specialize in next year? * How do they plan to personally grow and develop next year? Their goals also draw back to the company’s yearly theme. Motivation and personalizing goals “Show me what’s worked in the past and let’s amplify that for the future.” — Jessica Fialkovich Every person is motivated differently. Some people are motivated by stretch goals that almost seem impossible to reach. It pushes them. Alternatively, some people resonate with more realistic goals that build off of their work the year before. These same people would be demotivated by such a big stretch goal. That’s why Jessica works with each salesperson on a personal level. Together, they look at what happened in the past that worked (and what didn’t), plus what needs to change to reach that new goal. For example,