Important: Brand Secrets and Strategies has been rebranded to Retail Solved. Please swap all BrandSecretsandStrategies.com URL’s with RetailSolved.com. This is now the Bulletproof Your Brand podcast. Thank you for listening!

MBO’s (Management By Objective) break strategic business objectives into bitesize chunks making them easier to digest & more attainable. Individual MBO’s rollup to organizational objectives driving the business forward creating high-performance teams

Welcome to Day 24: How To Use Management By Objective To Maximize Sales (MBO’s)

The Retail solved Blueprint to teach you everything you need to know to confidently grow and scale your brand, build a connected community of loyal evangelists, and multiply your brands impact, sales, and profits.

If we are meeting for the first time, my name is Dan Lohman. I’ve had the privilege of mentoring and working with hundreds of brands from pre-revenue to multi billion dollars in sales. This a culmination of the best strategies that are working today. I’ve spent years testing and perfecting them to save you valuable time and money while giving you the edge you deserve.

If you haven’t done so yet, download the free 30 Days To Prosperity Workbook at RetailSolved.com/30DayWorkbook to help you get the most out of this brand-building series. Go back and listen to all of the episodes in this masterclass to that you don’t miss a thing. The strategies build upon each other in the order of the series. Please share these and help me raise the bar in natural.

I want to take a moment to recap the last episode - Be Laser Focused, Say "No" to Distractions

Topic: How To Use Management By Objective To Maximize Sales

Management By Objectives are commonly known as “MBO’s”

Now we want to shift the focus from you to your team - the people you surround yourself with. The people you put in place to handle the day-to-day operations as well help you move the business forward. More specifically, how do you develop, motivate, and maintain a highly efficient team. You use MBO’s.

As a leader, you need everyone working toward the same goals and objectives for the organization to be effective and successful. The best way for the organization to reach and achieve its goals and objectives is for everyone in it to work in a coordinated way toward the accomplish of the objective.

Think of any team sport for example, the olympics. The team is only as successful as the weakest player. They all succeed and fail as a team. The same holds true for your business. Everyone has a specific well defined job that they need to be empowered and well trained to do. They also need to understand exactly what the objective and the goals are for their job and how they roll up to the unit and then to the total business.

Let me give you an example. If you want to grow sales by 5% then you need to produce product more, right? That means you need to plan ahead of time to have more raw ingredients, packaging, production capability, warehouse space, and inventory on hand well before you start to promote that product. If you don’t, you will have out of stocks and your plan will fail miserable.

You also need to coordinate your sales and marketing strategies. As soon as you know the product will be available and when you can begin to sell in additional displays, gain distribution at new retailers, and sell in the new items. You also need to have the trade promotion funds in place to support the your efforts. This is in addition to the additional capital required to fund and produce the additional product.

The point here is that there are a lot of things to consider and think about and they all require planning and coordination. MBO’s are a great tool to help get everyone onboard on marching in lockstep toward a common goal or objective.

MBO’s were created by management guru Peter Drucker in the 50’s and they are used across a variety of organizations because they work and because they lead to successful outcomes. They also help improve employee performance and they deliver predictable results. Risk reduction is critical to the success of your business. It also helps to improve your evaluations as well as making your brand more attractive to investors and retailers.

A key strength of the MBO process is the collaboration between the workers and their team leads. In the next session we will be talking about scorecards which have a lot of similarities to MBO’s but are used as more of a project management tool. Use these tools in together to give your brand the edge it deserves.

So, How do you set MBO’s up?
You’ve hear the expression: how do you eat an elephant - one bite at a time. Same goes here. Beginning with the top and working down, develop the objectives for the business. Then break them in to bitesize chunks and delegate them to the responsible business unit. From there, have each employee develop MBO’s that support the mission and then hold them accountable.

What does an MBO look like
Each team member should have several and they should be weighted by their importance and relevance.

Companies that use MBO’s typically have greater sales, are more drivenwith higher achievers, and they are more productive. Use them to help give your brand the competitive edge it deserves.

For additional inspiration listen to podcast episodes:
SECRETS 24 The 10 Most Important Things Every Brand MUST Do To Be Successful, Dan Lohman With Brand Secrets And Strategies - Every brand's success can be traced back to how well they execute fundamental strategies. Small nuances in the way brands plan, implement, & collaborate with retailers can set you apart as the category leader giving you a sustainable competitive advantage
SECRETS 158 Meaghan Connell & AJ Yager With Praxis Metrics, How To Turn Your Data Into Explosive Sales Growth
SECRETS 159 Gary Hirshberg, Seth Goldman, Miyoko Schinner, Kyle Garner, Sheryl O’Loughlin & Chuck Muth, Sage Advice From Natural Industry Icons Revisited
SECRETS 169 How To Instantly Gain A Competitive Edge In Business, Daniel Lohman With Brand Secrets And Strategies - Your success as a brand depends on every competitive advantage you have in your category. That begins with every competitive edge you have as a leader. The simple easy to adopt strategy to give you a distinct and sustainable competitive advantage

Tip of the day: MBO’s break strategic business objectives into bitesize chunks making them easier to digest and more attainable. Individual MBO’s rollup to accomplish larger organizational objectives driving the business forward.

I’ve recorded the video which has illustrations and additional information I can’t share on an audio podcast. You can watch the accompanying video on on the podcast webpage and you can get there by going to RetailSolved.com/Session250. In tomorrows show we’ll talk about How To Ensure Flawless Execution Using Scorecards.

This episode will build on today’s conversation. Thanks for listening and I look forward to seeing you in the next show.