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Accepting objectives you do not agree with

Andrew_Ryan_89
Posts: 530 Forumite
Hi guys,
Start my new role at the beginning of the year. It is essentially a sales role but quite a new role. With that said, there was a lot of things that needed to be changed and implemented and that is still going on today.
Long story short, the numbers that have been given to be are quite unrealistic. A few months ago my boss asked me for a realistic expectation of what we would achieve in a certain 3 month period. I was honest and predicted that the results would be low and will pick up in the next quarter as we built mormentum. I was spot on but when I produced my report, he asked me to change it to reflect higher numbers. I protested a little but was told to change it.
Recently, after 7 months in the role, I finally got my objectives. Again, the overall target does not seem too realistic. To give you an example, I am suppose to produce 100 sales a month. The guy who done this role before me and was much more experienced, achieved 24 in his best month. The idea is that he started with the role, laid a lot of ground work and I should be picking up from his work, but truth be told his numbers were declining rapidly before I joined.
Now I have been asked to accept the objectives that have been sent to me but I don't agree with them. I think the numbers are not realistic, especially with our current systems and processes.
Any advice?
Start my new role at the beginning of the year. It is essentially a sales role but quite a new role. With that said, there was a lot of things that needed to be changed and implemented and that is still going on today.
Long story short, the numbers that have been given to be are quite unrealistic. A few months ago my boss asked me for a realistic expectation of what we would achieve in a certain 3 month period. I was honest and predicted that the results would be low and will pick up in the next quarter as we built mormentum. I was spot on but when I produced my report, he asked me to change it to reflect higher numbers. I protested a little but was told to change it.
Recently, after 7 months in the role, I finally got my objectives. Again, the overall target does not seem too realistic. To give you an example, I am suppose to produce 100 sales a month. The guy who done this role before me and was much more experienced, achieved 24 in his best month. The idea is that he started with the role, laid a lot of ground work and I should be picking up from his work, but truth be told his numbers were declining rapidly before I joined.
Now I have been asked to accept the objectives that have been sent to me but I don't agree with them. I think the numbers are not realistic, especially with our current systems and processes.
Any advice?
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Comments
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Andrew_Ryan_89 wrote: »Hi guys,
Start my new role at the beginning of the year. It is essentially a sales role but quite a new role. With that said, there was a lot of things that needed to be changed and implemented and that is still going on today.
Long story short, the numbers that have been given to be are quite unrealistic. A few months ago my boss asked me for a realistic expectation of what we would achieve in a certain 3 month period. I was honest and predicted that the results would be low and will pick up in the next quarter as we built mormentum. I was spot on but when I produced my report, he asked me to change it to reflect higher numbers. I protested a little but was told to change it.
Recently, after 7 months in the role, I finally got my objectives. Again, the overall target does not seem too realistic. To give you an example, I am suppose to produce 100 sales a month. The guy who done this role before me and was much more experienced, achieved 24 in his best month. The idea is that he started with the role, laid a lot of ground work and I should be picking up from his work, but truth be told his numbers were declining rapidly before I joined.
Now I have been asked to accept the objectives that have been sent to me but I don't agree with them. I think the numbers are not realistic, especially with our current systems and processes.
Any advice?
Did you take the advice from the previous thread and talk to your boss about all this? What has he said?
In the final analysis, all you can do is make it clear why you think the targets are unrealistic, but I am afraid that this isn't a negotiation - if the employer wants to set a target then it is their target to set. So unless you can convince them to lower the target based on your explanation of why it is unrealistic, then there is nothing you can do, short of leaving the job. Which, given your two posts about this now, would seem like a good idea - you need to looking elsewhere because this doesn't seem to be the job for you, unrealistic targets or not.0 -
It is not the target that really matter but what goes with them.
if you miss the target what happens.
if it is just no bonus then whats the problem
if it is scapegoat for a flawed business plan then that's a different issue.
IME what happens with targets used to justify a direction/investment etc is the high end of projections is always used and these need to be maintained in plans to justify the decision making process.
eg
Your target is 100, that will be based on the market being 800-1000 and the market share will be 7%-10% what happens is the bottom end is achieved so the actual numbers become 56.
What did the business plan say before and has that been adjusted for reality0 -
Andrew_Ryan_89 wrote: »Hi guys,
Start my new role at the beginning of the year. It is essentially a sales role but quite a new role. With that said, there was a lot of things that needed to be changed and implemented and that is still going on today.
Long story short, the numbers that have been given to be are quite unrealistic. A few months ago my boss asked me for a realistic expectation of what we would achieve in a certain 3 month period. I was honest and predicted that the results would be low and will pick up in the next quarter as we built mormentum. I was spot on but when I produced my report, he asked me to change it to reflect higher numbers. I protested a little but was told to change it.
Recently, after 7 months in the role, I finally got my objectives. Again, the overall target does not seem too realistic. To give you an example, I am suppose to produce 100 sales a month. The guy who done this role before me and was much more experienced, achieved 24 in his best month. The idea is that he started with the role, laid a lot of ground work and I should be picking up from his work, but truth be told his numbers were declining rapidly before I joined.
Now I have been asked to accept the objectives that have been sent to me but I don't agree with them. I think the numbers are not realistic, especially with our current systems and processes.
Any advice?
Your employer could be setting a high target to see what you can hit, set a low one and you may just coast to this. Of course, I'm sure you'd argue if its to high you may not be motivated to hit the target but IMO most people in the short term would try their hardest.Don't trust a forum for advice. Get proper paid advice. Any advice given should always be checked0 -
Takeaway_Addict wrote: »If your boss disagrees and says that is the target then tough, you know you've not got much employment protection so continuing to argue now isn't going to help. .
And just to clarify, even if there was employment protection, in this situation it wouldn't mean much. Tribunals do not get into whether a target is right or not - that is, in the view of the law, the employers business. The assumption made is that an employer does not set tragets that are unachievable because then, if they dismissed everyone who didn't achieve them, then it would be against their own business interests as they would never retain staff. That may not be the actual situation, and we know that employers set unreasonable targets for all sorts of reasons - but the law doesn't recognise that. It would have to be a wildly ridiculous target that was transparently wrong for a tribunal to intervene in the business judgement of an employer.0 -
Andrew_Ryan_89 wrote: »Hi guys,
Start my new role at the beginning of the year. It is essentially a sales role but quite a new role. With that said, there was a lot of things that needed to be changed and implemented and that is still going on today.
Long story short, the numbers that have been given to be are quite unrealistic. A few months ago my boss asked me for a realistic expectation of what we would achieve in a certain 3 month period. I was honest and predicted that the results would be low and will pick up in the next quarter as we built mormentum. I was spot on but when I produced my report, he asked me to change it to reflect higher numbers. I protested a little but was told to change it.
Recently, after 7 months in the role, I finally got my objectives. Again, the overall target does not seem too realistic. To give you an example, I am suppose to produce 100 sales a month. The guy who done this role before me and was much more experienced, achieved 24 in his best month. The idea is that he started with the role, laid a lot of ground work and I should be picking up from his work, but truth be told his numbers were declining rapidly before I joined.
Now I have been asked to accept the objectives that have been sent to me but I don't agree with them. I think the numbers are not realistic, especially with our current systems and processes.
Any advice?
If they need you to produce 100 sales a month then saying you can't do that won't help much!.
You need to tell them what you need to do and what needs to be in place to achieve those sales. So you really should be thinking about what you would need to do to hit those targets and then tell your boss.0 -
Andrew_Ryan_89 wrote: »Hi guys,
Start my new role at the beginning of the year. It is essentially a sales role but quite a new role. With that said, there was a lot of things that needed to be changed and implemented and that is still going on today.
Long story short, the numbers that have been given to be are quite unrealistic. A few months ago my boss asked me for a realistic expectation of what we would achieve in a certain 3 month period. I was honest and predicted that the results would be low and will pick up in the next quarter as we built mormentum. I was spot on but when I produced my report, he asked me to change it to reflect higher numbers. I protested a little but was told to change it.
Recently, after 7 months in the role, I finally got my objectives. Again, the overall target does not seem too realistic. To give you an example, I am suppose to produce 100 sales a month. The guy who done this role before me and was much more experienced, achieved 24 in his best month. The idea is that he started with the role, laid a lot of ground work and I should be picking up from his work, but truth be told his numbers were declining rapidly before I joined.
Now I have been asked to accept the objectives that have been sent to me but I don't agree with them. I think the numbers are not realistic, especially with our current systems and processes.
Any advice?
I've learned the hard way that it's a good idea to always send immediate follow-up emails when you've discussed something and you have the feeling that the other person will change their mind or forget what they've said.
You can make your email as flowery as you want (or not!), but as long as you have the information in it and can refer to it at a later date, then that's what matters. The trick is to not make your email sound too formal
e.g.Hi Robin
Thanks for the sending across the PDF a few moments ago. As discussed earlier on, I hope to follow in Joe's footsteps and, as agreed, aim for 24 sales per month when he done particularly well (the highest in July 2016)...... etc.........
^ Yes, I know that email doesnt make much sense! (I didnt really think about the phrasing), but the point is to just try and refer to your conversation so that you can refer to it later on:EasterBun0
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