Interest rates spiked, and now our real estate development sales team has missed their contract targets for eight weeks straight. They claim the target is impossible now. How do we adjust targets for external macro shocks without letting the team off the hook?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When major market shifts occur, keeping unrealistic targets on your Scorecard is demoralizing and counterproductive. If a target is truly impossible due to external forces, your team will stop trying, which is the worst possible outcome for an owner.

However, you cannot simply lower the bar because things got difficult. You must adjust the target based on objective data, not feelings or excuses.

First, look at your activity-based leading indicators. Are your sales representatives still making the required number of outbound calls, booking meetings, and sending proposals? If their activity metrics are green but the closing rate has dropped, you have a conversion issue caused by the market.

In this scenario, you should adjust the lagging contract target to align with the new market reality, but simultaneously increase the targets for the upstream activities. If it now takes twice as many leads to close a deal, your team must increase their weekly activity targets to compensate.

This approach keeps your team focused on what they can control. They cannot control interest rates, but they can control their daily activity levels. By adjusting the targets based on this logical relationship, you maintain high standards of accountability while giving your team a realistic path to winning again.