I used to work for a web publication that produced many webcasts. We used to get sponsors for the webcasts by handing off the information of the webcast attendees to the webcast sponsor. This was all in the T&C when the attendees joined. We didn’t hide it.

Our sponsors, many times,  would want a guaranteed number of leads they would receive before they would decide to sponsor a webcast. If a sponsor would want a 250 lead guarantee, we would say fine and deliver around 300 leads. Next time, the sponsor would want a 300 lead guarantee. So we would do additional marketing and deliver 350 leads. And typically, the next time the sponsor would ask for 350 but it would be a weak subject and we would only deliver 275. Suddenly we look bad because we couldn’t deliver on our promised guarantee.

Looking back at this scenario, I’m bothered by the way we let our sponsors/clients determine what our goals should be. How come our clients were telling us what was achievable? How come we weren’t pushing ourselves to grow the number of leads? I didn’t have the power to get rid of guarantees. I ran the marketing department and the sales department was the one giving these promises that my department had to deliver on. Regardless, if I was back in this position, I wouldn’t let sales, or our clients, dictate what our goals are.

I would tell the company that the marketing department is only guaranteeing 250 leads but our goal is to guarantee 300 in six months…and 350 in one year. And so on and so forth. Setting internal goals, I think, is much better that having clients push you forward because it allows us to constantly improve regardless of whether clients are demanding it or not.