Many small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) treat performance management as a tick-box exercise. Reviews are infrequent, feedback is vague, and goals are more wishful than strategic. The result? Disengaged employees, dwindling productivity, and missed growth opportunities.
This isn’t just a people problem—it’s a revenue problem.
When clear goals, coaching, and alignment are missing, employees underperform. High potential is wasted. Turnover increases. And innovation gets stifled.
Now imagine the inverse: a performance engine so well-oiled that every individual effort aligns perfectly with revenue-driving objectives. This isn’t fantasy. It’s strategy.
Small businesses have an edge when they treat people development as part of their growth strategy rather than an afterthought...Performance management, when done well, highlights opportunities to align personal growth with company goals, which creates momentum and loyalty. Neil Fried, Senior Vice President, EcoATMB2B
Here are five concrete steps to move from performance drift to revenue lift.
Step 1: Align Performance with Business Drivers
Opportunity: Drive focus and impact by connecting daily tasks to strategic outcomes.
When employees understand how their individual goals support the company’s broader mission, they work smarter and with greater ownership. It makes the result of their work feel measurable—and that measurability often translates to revenue.
Use frameworks like SMART goals or OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) to set targets explicitly linked to revenue-impacting outcomes. For example:
A customer support rep’s goal might link to customer retention.
A developer’s output might relate to product delivery timelines.
A salesperson’s pipeline health helps forecast future cash flow.
SolasPerform Tip: Use Solas Lite’s Comms Planner to clarify and document expectations at every level—ensuring alignment from C-suite to intern.
Step 2: Make Feedback Continuous, Not Annual
Opportunity: Stop issues before they escalate—and recognise wins when they happen.
The traditional performance review—once a year, vague, and backward-looking—isn’t just outdated; it’s dangerous. It misses key moments and fails to drive better future performance.
Replace it with continuous, real-time feedback loops. Employees thrive when they know how they’re doing and what they can improve right now.
Regular 1:1s help surface small problems before they become major blockers.
Quick feedback recognition boosts motivation and morale.
Identifying and correcting misaligned behaviour early saves time, resources, and ultimately revenue.
SolasPerform Tip: Use Solas Lite’s Comms Checker to ensure feedback is constructive, clear, and framed to motivate, not deflate.
Step 3: Coach Performance, Don’t Just Judge It
Opportunity: Help employees grow in tandem with business success.
Rather than setting up reviews as judgment days, reframe performance conversations as developmental dialogues. Managers should act less as evaluators, and more like coaches.
Coaching builds trust and psychological safety.
It helps employees see how they can directly contribute to financial goals.
People are more likely to stay and invest in their work when they feel invested in.
Investing in employee development doesn’t just improve morale—it improves margins. According to research, companies with robust development strategies report significantly higher revenue per employee.
SolasPerform Tip: Use SolasPerform to guide reflective conversations and draft personalised, growth-oriented objectives.
Step 4: Use Reviews to Identify Hidden Strengths
Opportunity: Maximise underutilised skills your business is already paying for.
Performance reviews, when done right, reveal powerful insights:
Who has leadership potential?
Who has cross-functional skills you weren’t using?
Where can delegation unlock new capacity?
By identifying overlooked capabilities, you can redeploy internal talent to areas where they drive more value—without costly recruitment.
This internal mobility saves on hiring costs, boosts engagement, and increases output from the same salary base. In essence, you’re increasing revenue with the resources you already have.
SolasPerform Tip: SolasOS helps surface these skillsets by bringing together feedback from across functions, 360-style.
Step 5: Set Future-Focused, Revenue-Relevant Goals
Opportunity: Give performance purpose by linking development to growth.
A performance review is not complete until it answers: what’s next?
Help employees set goals not only for improvement but for innovation. Encourage them to set SMART goals that tie directly to revenue levers, such as:
Shortening sales cycles
Improving customer satisfaction scores
Increasing on-time delivery rate
Reducing cost per acquisition
These goals should ladder up to company-wide outcomes. When individuals see how their growth can move the business forward—and their own careers—they respond with vigour.
SolasPerform Tip: Let SolasPerform recommend forward-looking goals aligned with both personal aspirations and business strategy.
The Outcome: Revenue that Starts from Within
Redefining employee performance as a revenue lever changes everything. It:
Improves productivity at the root level
Enhances strategic execution
Reduces churn
Increases innovation capacity
Every business says its people are its greatest asset. But only those that align performance with financial outcomes tap into their full power.
Performance isn’t HR’s problem—it’s everyone’s potential.
In Summary: Solas Performance Enables Revenue-Driven Growth
By taking these five steps, you reframe performance from a cost centre to a profit centre. It’s not enough to “do reviews”—you must do them strategically.
Solas Performance is here to help you at every stage of that journey:
Solas Lite clarifies communication, feedback, and planning.
SolasPerform turns reviews into strategic, future-focused conversations.
SolasOS create a talent intelligence layer from a broad cross-section or talent data.
Our system streamlines, supports, and elevates—so you can spend more time realising your team’s potential.
The Hidden Revenue Is Already Here. Let’s Unlock It.
Contact Solas Performance today.
Your next revenue leap might not be in the next customer win—but in your next conversation with your team.