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Selling And Goal Setting; Setting Sales Goals That Actually Work

Guest post by: Claude Whitacre

Article Overview: If you have been selling for more than a week, the subject of setting goals has come up. Almost every sales goal has been useless in producing the wanted result. Here is how to make sales goal setting actually work for you.

Selling And Goal Setting; Setting Sales Goals That Actually Work

Have you been to a sales meeting where they talk about goals? We all have. Then you may set a goal like "A million dollars in three years", or something like it. Then a day later, you have completely forgotten the goal, and you are back to old habits.

Why do most goals fail to work? They were not real goals in the first place. If someone talks to you about setting goals, the goals you set will tend to be whatever the other person will think is a good goal. Most goals are set in the future, and no action is taken today. That is why they don't work.

Here are two goals;

"I am going to lose 100 pounds in three years"

"I am going to lose one pound today"

Now, which goal is more likely to be carried out? The second one, by a landslide.

Why? Because you are involved right now. You can't put it off until tomorrow. Goals need several things to be effective.

Goals must be real to you. They have to be something you want to achieve more than you want the comfort of staying the same.

Goals must have a schedule to accomplish them. When I was selling years ago, I had an income goal by the week. If I had that goal accomplished by Wednesday, I stacked my sales so I was ahead of the next week. If I hadn't met my goals by Friday, I worked through the weekend. My goal were real, and the deadline was real. Otherwise a goal is just wishful thinking.

Goals must always have a deadline. Remember that homework that needed to be turned in on Friday, when you were a kid? When did you do it? Thursday night, if you are like 99.999% of the planet. You need deadlines. A schedule is how you give yourself daily deadlines. That's why scheduling is so important.

Goals must never ...ever be put off. "I'll start accomplishing this goal next week" will never work. How do I know? Because it has never worked in the past, for anyone you know.

"I'll try" is the death of accomplishing goals. "I'll try" is the exact same thing as "I won't"

Saying "I should" is even worse. Saying the word "should" means exactly the same thing as "won't".

I have seen a foolproof method to see if someone has real goals;

Do they keep a record of what they are doing to accomplish a goal? Are they keeping track of how far they are today, if they are ahead of schedule, if they are behind schedule?

If you are keeping records, you are a person to watch, and someone who means business. If you are not keeping a schedule, you may as well go back to sleep. Your goals are just future lies.

Good luck.

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Article Tags: achieving goals, goal setting, sales goals



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