photo credit: jaycoxfilm

7 things you can do to become a goal getter.  Have you noticed how Top Producers seem to consistently hit their goals?  Have you wondered why they hit their goals when you don’t?  Now you too can set goals and get them on a consistent basis.

First - set your own goals.  While Top Producers may be influenced by others and take what they have to say into consideration they only set the goals they want to set.  That means they never allow a company or sales manager to establish either their goals or the specific targets they want to hit.

Second - focus on the ultimate outcome.  For most people, even Top Producers, numbers alone aren’t all that motivating.  Your goals should be so exciting for you so motivating for you that you’re like you were when you were a little kid marking off and counting down the days until a major holiday.  It’s never the numbers themselves that have you on the edge of your seat in anticipation eagerly and tirelessly taking action.  It’s the outcomes those numbers produce in terms of what hitting those numbers allows you to do.

Third - your goals are written and actionable.  You’ve heard a thousand times that you need to write your goals down, however, simply writing them down isn’t working for you.  Top Producers makes certain the goals they write down are written in sufficient detail so they know the specific actions to take, and they track and measure their progress toward completion.  Fuzzy or hazy goals produce equivalent results.

Four - plan your way around the obstacles.  Top Producers know they can expect the unexpected in addition to the things they can predict will get in their way.  The best way to attain success is to plan for success by planning how you’ll work around anything and everything that gets in your way.

Five - adopt, adapt, act.  When a Top Producer is exposed to an idea that is in alignment with what they want to accomplish they ask, “how could I adopt and adapt this idea in my business?”  Most of the most profitable ideas will come from taking an idea from another industry and applying it to your business.  Never exactly copy any idea and never ever exactly copy an idea from a peer.  Without adaptation the idea will never produce the results for you that it does for the originator.  No matter what, the biggest secret to goal getting and results is action.

Six - focus.  No matter what a Top Producer stays focused on the prize.  How you get there can and will change, but your focus shouldn’t.  Your focus should be on the ultimate outcome.  Be willing to adapt how you get there.

Seven - accountability.  Top Producers hold themselves accountable.  They don’t set themselves up for failure by committing to actions they know they won’t take.  Just like you there are certain things they don’t like, don’t want to do, and don’t feel they’re good at.  Just like you they know there are many things they do like, they will do, and that they feel competent at.  It makes more sense to build your plans around those things, the things you know you will do, than trying to fool yourself into thinking you’ll make yourself do the things you don’t want to do.

This is the last day of the first month of your best year ever.  By this point you have one month under your belt implementing your new sales action plan.  And it’s a good time to step back and make sure
your plans will keep you on track.

There are 3 questions you should ask yourself:

1. Have I identified the obstacles that have kept me from achieving my sales goals in the past, and will my new plan overcome them?
2. Have I reviewed my daily actions and identified how I will spend more time selling and less time doing other things?
3. Have I identified my top 10 new clients & developed a marketing plan for earning their business?

Just setting sales goals without expanding those goals into the specific actions you’ll take doesn’t work.  It also doesn’t work to set the same goals you’ve set before that you didn’t achieve
expecting that somehow you’ll achieve them this time.  Sometimes the biggest obstacle between you and your goals is you, but until you figure out what you’re doing or not doing to sabatoge yourself and
why history will repeat itself.

It’s sad but true that most sales professionals spend very little time actually selling.  Sometimes you find lots of things to do to avoid selling.  The biggest reasons you spend so little time selling
include: fear of delegation, fear of rejection, you don’t know how to market yourself so you can’t find people to sell to, you don’t feel comfortable with your sales skills so you aren’t all that excited about holding more sales appointments, and instead of planning your success you’d rather fly by the seat of your pants and
hope for the best.

Focus and action, and focused action are differentiators between successful salespeople and everyone else.  If you don’t know who you want your next client to be you can’t make a conscious and focused effort to obtain that new client.  Even when salespeople do identify the list of top wanted future clients they screw it up by doing nothing more than calling these people every few months to “touch
base”.  That’s not a marketing plan and it doesn’t help your efforts.

Take the time now to make sure your sales action plan is serving you well and continue the good work.  There are no free lunches and there certainly aren’t any free lunches in sales, so get to work;-)