Average salespeople set average goals, achieve them, and then go into a period of suspended animation, like a bear in winter. Top salespeople go about things a bit differently.

They set new goals whenever they achieve old ones. They look at achieved goals like yesterday’s newspaper — useful only for lining birdcages.

Setting effective goals

Here are nine tips for effective goal-setting worth sharing with your staff:

1. If it’s not in writing, it’s not a goal. An unwritten want is a wish, a dream, a never-happen. The day you put your goal in writing is the day it becomes a commitment that’ll change your actions.
2. If it’s not specific, it’s not a goal. Achieving sales success is not a goal. Until you translate your vague wishes into concrete goals, you aren’t going to make much progress.
3. Goals must be believable. If you don’t believe you can achieve a goal, you won’t pay the price for it.
4. An effective goal is an exciting challenge. If your goal doesn’t push you beyond where you’ve been before — or if it doesn’t demand your best and a bit more you didn’t realize you had in you — it isn’t going to change your ways and elevate your career.
5. Goals must be adjusted with new information. Set your goals quickly and adjust them later if you’ve aimed too high or too low. Many of the goals that have the greatest positive influence on our lives are those we set in unfamiliar territory. As we learn more about the realities, we adjust our goals down if they become unbelievable, or up if they lose their challenge because they’re too easy.
6. Maintain a balance between long-term and short-term goals. Short-term goals are those that should take less than 90 days to achieve. If a short-term goal takes more than 90 days, you’ll lose interest in it. In some cases, you may want to turn a short-term goal into a long-term goal. But if all your goals are long-term, you may have difficulty keeping your performance up because the payoffs are too far in the future.
7. Have a set of goals for every day and review results every night. Set daily goals for yourself in the morning and aim to reach them before resting your head at night.
8. Set activity goals, not production goals. I’ll talk to 10 prospects today, I’ll give five presentations today – these are activity goals. If all your goals are production goals (I’ll make 10 sales today), you’re setting yourself up for a slump. A few lost sales, a change in the economy or competitive conditions and you’re hopelessly behind. But if your daily and weekly goals are based on activity (the number of prospecting calls to make, the number of e-mails to send) you’ll keep meeting your goals — even during challenging times.
9. Review your goals regularly. New goals may rise out of the old ones you’ve already achieved. Understand that your goal-setting and goal-achieving activities are a lifelong commitment to growth.

Adapted from “How to Master the Art of Selling,” by Tom Hopkins, founder and president of Tom Hopkins International. He can be reached at www.tomhopkins.com

Tags: commitment, goal-setting, production, strategies, Tom Hopkins