SET AND ACHIEVE

Post date: Apr 12, 2021 2:20:35 PM

ALL YOUR SALES GOALS

If I’ve got correct goals, and I keep pursuing them the best way I know how everything else falls into line. If I do the right thing, I know I’m going to succeed. —DAN DIERDORF.

Top salespeople are intensely goal-oriented. In every study, the quality of goal orientation seems to be associated with high levels of success and achievement. The highest-paid salespeople know in advance how much they are going to earn each week, each month, each quarter, and each year. They know how many calls they will have to make to achieve a particular level of sales, and they have clear plans about what they are going to do with the money they earn. It is essential for your success that you decide exactly how much you intend to earn each year. If you are not absolutely clear about your earnings target, your sales activities will be unfocused. You will be like a person trying to shoot at a target in the fog. Even if you are the finest marksman in the world, you are not going to hit a target you can’t see. You have to know exactly what you’re aiming at.

Your Annual Income Goal

Begin with your annual income goal. How much do you intend to make in the next twelve months? What is the exact number? Write this number down. This becomes the target toward which you orient all of your activities throughout the year. You need a goal that is realistic, but challenging. Take your highest income year to date and increase that amount by 25 to 50 percent, whatever amount you are comfortable with. Be sure to make your goal believable and achievable. Ridiculous goals do not motivate you; they demotivate you because deep in your heart, you know that they are unattainable. As a result, you will quit at the first sign of adversity. Top salespeople in every field know exactly what they are going to earn each year and each part of each year. If you ask them, they can tell you within a dollar what they are aiming at every single day. Low-performing salespeople have no idea how much they are going to earn. They have to wait until the end of the year and get their tax forms to find out what happened. For them, every day, month, and year is a new financial adventure. They have no idea where they are going to end up.

Put Them in Writing To be effective, your goals must be in writing. Sometimes people are reluctant to write their goals down on paper. They say, “What if I don’t make it?” You don’t need to worry. The very act of writing your goals down increases your likelihood of achieving them by 1,000 percent—ten times—and usually far faster than you expected. Even if you don’t hit your goal on schedule, it is still better for you to have a written goal than to have no goal at all. Your Annual Sales Goal The second part of goal setting is for you to ask yourself, “How much am I going to have to sell this year to achieve my personal income goal?

This should not be too difficult to calculate. Even if you work on a combination of base plus commission, you should be able to determine the exact sales volume required for you to earn the amount of money that you want.

Monthly and Weekly Goals

Once you have decided your annual income and sales goals, break them down by month. How much will you have to earn and sell each month to achieve your annual goals? Once you have your annual sales and income goals and your monthly sales and income goals, break them down to weekly sales and income goals. How much will you have to sell each week in order to achieve your long-term goals? Daily Sales Goals Finally, determine how much you have to sell each day to earn the amount you want to earn each day. Let us say that your annual income goal is $50,000. If you divide $50,000 by 12, you get approximately $4,200 per month. If you divide $50,000 by 50, the number of weeks that you work in an average year, it comes out to $1,000 per week. Now you have definite, specific targets to aim at.

Set Clear Activity Goals

The final step in setting sales goals is for you to determine the specific activities in which you must engage to achieve your desired sales level. How many calls will you have to make to get how many appointments with prospects? How many presentations and callbacks will you have to generate to achieve a specific level of sales? When you keep accurate records day by day and month by month, you will soon be able to predict with considerable accuracy exactly what you will have to do each day and each week to achieve your monthly and annual income goals.