photo credit: ogimogi

When you can’t hit your targets it must be the target’s fault, right?  I know that sounds silly yet salespeople fail to hit their targets everyday and they always have someone or something to blame.  It couldn’t possibly their fault they didn’t hit their target, or could it?

If you were throwing darts and missed the entire bull’s-eye would the target itself be to blame?  Would you need to move the target making it easier to hit?  Would you need bigger darts making it easier to hit the target?  Of course not, you’d need to adapt and adjust how you threw the dart so you could hit the target.

The same is true in your daily sales activities.  When you’ve consciously chosen a good target for yourself there isn’t any reason or excuse for changing the target.  It isn’t acceptable to make excuses for yourself when you haven’t hit your targets at the end of the week.

However, there is a lot to learn and a lot to be gained when you don’t hit your targets.  As you track your progress you know exactly where you are at the end of the week, and why you’re where you are.  You also know where you intended to be.

So why is there a gap between what you set as your target and what you got as your outcome?  What do you need to do, and what are you willing to do differently to hit your target the following week?  There has to be a change in the actions you’ll take.

When you continue to take or avoid the same actions you’ll continue to get the same results.  No big mystery there.  Yet that’s exactly what the majority of sales people do week in and week out.

If you don’t know what to do or how to do it, what will you do to know?  Until you do something you’re stuck, and as long as you’re stuck you can’t hit your targets.  So stop blaming the target, stop repeating poor or non-existent behaviors, and start racking up those bull’s-eyes.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 5th, 2008 at 6:00 am and is filed under coaching. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.