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“Conflicts look bad. I always prepare touchy agenda points with my 2 senior leaders before leadership team meetings. This way senior leadership presents a united front,” recently mentioned the CEO of a 200-people company. Most leadership teams have too few open, healthy conflicts. This makes them less effective, reduces decision quality, and ultimately slows down business growth. How can you step outside of your comfort zone and mine more healthy conflicts? Healthy conflicts help propel your business forward Many CEOs stick to their comfort zone: you avoid some conflicts and embrace other, based on your natural conflict style – not based on what is best for your business. Artificial harmony created by conflict avoidance is treacherous, as this
How many decisions do you make every day? According to Cornell University
It’s midnight. Your recycling bin is overflowing with rejected resumes. Your eyes can barely focus on the letters in front of you — and you have this uneasy feeling that you are about to invest in another candidate who just isn’t going to work out. This has been a vicious cycle over the past several years, and you find yourself asking yet again,” Why can’t I find the right salespeople?” You’ve spent an excessive number of hours and are well into six figures in budget dollars hiring, training, firing, and rehiring. You’re losing credibility in the marketplace because your customers are continually being introduced to new reps. With each salesperson that doesn’t work out, you can feel your employees questioning your leadership and the direction the company is headed. And this last candidate… they checked every single box. An ideal candidate with a promising start. Industry experience. Excellent references. High performance everywhere they went. You gave them everything they wanted only to discover they weren’t what they appeared to be. How could you have been so wrong about yet another candidate, a supposed “A-Player” who just couldn’t deliver the level of success they promised in the interview. Instead of burying yourself in another pile of seemingly perfect resumes, it might be time to take a step back. Key Article Takeaways: · Pitfalls that prevent A-players from performing in a new sales environment · How to lay out a sales roadmap to generate consistent results · Key sales leadership focus areas that pay dividends Time to Slow Down to Speed Up Some organizations seem to have it all figured out: low sales turnover; tremendous growth; happy employees doing what they love. Sure, when things go right, everyone is happy. But when issues continuously arise that take your top salespeople away from their outbound calls to chase down problems or they are struggling to know where to focus their effort, there’s likely a more significant issue at hand. By all means, keep searching for the best and brightest salespeople – the ones you know have the talent and desire to excel in your organization. But before you get too far in the process, take a step back and examine your sales readiness. · Are you setting your salespeople up for success right off the bat? · Are there things you know you could do better but haven’t had the time to fix? · Are you doing everything you should be to create a sales culture that allows anyone you hire the opportunity to see success? Structure: Another pitfall that can derail even the best A-Player is when an organization does not have the proper infrastructure to support its sales efforts. This encompasses a wide range of elements from staff structure to the necessary systems to measure and manage performance. For example, creating clear lines of accountability for all roles and functions that interface with the customer will bring clarity to performance expectations. This prevents time-consuming distractions and fosters a customer centric culture. Another area of structure involves the method in which your prospect and customer segments are designated and managed. This provides your customers with a consistent experience and enables your sales resources to be positioned in their areas of strength. These best practices create a solid platform for your salespeople to work from. Then, layering on the appropriate systems to capture sales activity, report on key metrics, manage sales pipeline, etc., allows you and your leadership team the critical visibility needed to keep a pulse on how the business is progressing toward its goals. As you assess your performance in this area, consider the consistency of your weekly one-on-one sales meetings for individual planning and mutual accountability. Given the reliance of the salesperson on their sales manager, powerful outcomes are produced when both sides are willing to be accountable to the other. Another important area to review is the level of value your sales meetings deliver to the team. Lastly, keep track of how often you participate in sales calls — both in-person and video calls, and how often you are creating powerful learning moments for your reps through these interactions. Are you struggling to find the time to apply this level of focus? Do you recognize there are times when you aren’t sure how to confidently lead and develop your salespeople? These common needs in small to mid-sized businesses were the driver behind my decision to transition my extensive VP Sales background to help top executives on a fractional or interim basis. If you’d like to have a preliminary discussion about the sales challenges you are facing, please feel welcome to contact me through any of these methods: 413-626-7040 , kdonovan@salesxceleration.com or book a call through my
“I should demote myself!” joked the head of sales. “It looks like I am better at selling than at managing a sales team.” We were looking at his team’s individual sales numbers. He was selling more when he was a regular salesperson than his whole team today. We too often promote the wrong person into a senior leadership position. The reason is: the promotion criteria we use are poor predictors of people’s leadership potential. How can you better identify potential senior leaders and avoid painful mistakes – so you can grow faster and with less pain? Why are we so bad at promoting the right people into leadership positions? We are all biased. We tend to overestimate specific traits we mistakenly believe indicate leadership potential. Common biases include: Past successes. Unfortunately prior performance is not a good predictor of leadership performance.
Homogeneity among your leadership team is like a decadent creamy chocolate cake: it feels tempting, but when you resist it, you get in much better shape. Increasing diversity on your leadership team leads to better decisions – and better financial results. However we have a natural tendency to surround ourselves with people similar to us: diversity is harder. How do you know whether your leadership team is diverse enough? Why is diversity important? Plenty of research has demonstrated that increasing diversity on your team enhances your top and bottom lines. Among others, as this
“You don’t belong here: you are a fraud! Why would smart people ever want to listen to you?” whispered the manager to the salesperson. Galvanized by this wake-up call that he desperately needed, the employee rose to the occasion and exceeded all expectations. Does this sound realistic? Of course not! Who would feel upbeat by such senseless, demotivating speech? This scenario obviously never existed – and yet the speech is 100% authentic: I heard it from a sales executive last week. It wasn’t directed at a team member though: it was directed at himself. Your inner critic: your #1 judge. We all have an inner voice that continuously judges us. Its main message varies from person to person; in next week’s newsletter, we will see how to identify your inner voice’s main messages. In this week’s newsletter, we will discuss its negative impact on yourself and on your ability to grow your business, and what to do about it. One of my client CEOs’ inner voice calls him a “loser who sets the wrong example to his team and will never be a successful entrepreneur” when he doesn’t take over what his team members fail to accomplish. My inner voice calls me “lazy and complacent who will fail as an entrepreneur and a father” when I am idle for more than 2 minutes, even on vacation – and makes me feel guilty and shameful every single time it happens. Our inner critic pretends to be helpful and necessary to our success, but its long-term impact is unequivocally negative. Why do we keep listening to our inner critic, even though it is obvious that its message is utterly uninspiring and demotivating? What can we do about it? How does your inner critic afflict your performance? Our inner critic constantly finds faults with self (for past mistakes or current shortcomings), with others, and with circumstances. This judge sounds helpful at first sight by shedding light on our shortcomings. While it has the appearance of a helper, it is a bully that blackmails us with shame and guilt, with pretty dramatic consequences in the long run. It tells you: “Without me pushing you, you will be unworthy of love / attention / success.” Your inner critic negatively affects you in three significant ways: Your inner critic has a long-term damaging impact on your own performance. Your inner critic acts like a radioactive armor: it pretends to be protective but its long-term impact on your performance is always disastrous. Let’s get back to the two examples above: Client CEO: To respond to the guilt of not being the ideal leader his inner critic describes, this CEO feels the pressure from his inner critic to micro-manage his team when they don’t deliver, at the risk of becoming his company’s #1 growth roadblock – with the negative consequences on his team and on business growth that you can imagine. In response to my guilty feeling of missing out on learning opportunities for my children (and hence of not being a good father) if I am idle on vacation, I take them on high-tempo sightseeing trips (“We only live once, let’s get the most out of it”, right?) – with, here again, the exact opposite long-term impact on my effectiveness as a father. “The inner critic is harmful because it triggers our self-protection mode, MIT Sloan sr lecturer Giardella says in
Some astonishing advances in information technology have made big headlines in recent months. You probably don’t need me to recap those headlines… but I want to ask you to pause to consider a single, sobering question those headlines have given rise to among sales professionals. Some of us ask this question out loud. Some of us don’t. But spoken or unspoken, the same question seems to be on a lot of people’s minds: Are good salespeople now, or will they ever be, irrelevant? I say no. I believe that no matter how powerful and transformative this technology may become, it will never, ever be able to replace a real-time human-to-human conversation between a potential buyer and a professional seller. Consider the definition of the word conversation: “A talk between two or more people in which thoughts, feelings, and ideas are expressed, questions are asked and answered, or news and information is exchanged.” There are three important words I want you to notice in that definition. The first word is people. Translation: No interaction is a conversation unless it includes real, live people! Next, look at the second critical word in that definition: feelings. Human buyers have feelings. There is simply no room for debate on that point. It follows that effective human sellers are the ones who can understand, empathize with, and respond authentically to those feelings. That’s something human beings do, not something robots do. Could robots do it twenty years from now? Ask us then. Our bet, though, is that this dynamic is not going to change. The third key word I want to draw your attention to in that definition is questions. Human buyers will always have questions, and effective human sellers will always be rewarded for helping them to identify the best answers to those questions. Not only that: The best sellers will always have questions of their own! All of this was true in the age of the telegraph; none of this is going to change in the age of AI. It’s a good idea to remind ourselves every now and then just how fundamental the act of asking and answering questions is to the world of the sales professional. Every question, after all, is a shift. Shifts are what we are paid to notice and respond to. In real-world conversations between buyers and sellers, unexpected issues always arise, and each time they do, they will invite the opportunity to engage in a different conversation than the one that either side could have foreseen as the interaction began. Conversations, in other words, are dynamic. If both sides already know what is going to happen, then there are no meaningful questions being asked, and the exchange is not a conversation. It’s a script. And our experience is that scripts – you know, those words and sentences that can be memorized and recited verbatim ahead of time – do not lead to optimal revenue production for sales teams. Human-to-human connection is what does that. Why? See word number two: feelings. As long as human beings make decisions emotionally and justify them intellectually – and they can be relied upon to do that in any and every purchase situation – salespeople will have a role to play and will be rewarded for performing that role well. What’s really interesting is that Sandler’s definition of selling connects directly to this concept of human-to-human connection. We teach our clients that selling is a conversation between adults to uncover the truth. And this way of looking at selling really is the key to understanding how AI fits into sales as a profession, in 2023 and in the years to come. People still buy from people… people always have had, and always will have, questions about what they are considering buying… and people still have feelings about the commitments they are considering making to other people. As long as all of that is true, salespeople who know how to lead effective conversations and know how to use the latest technology will be in heavy demand. Data is great, but it’s not everything. Meaningful person-to-person connection calls for more than useful data, which is what artificial intelligence provides. A real person-person dialogue calls for empathy, an understanding of the other person as a person, and the ability to pose questions that respect and support the emerging relationship. All of those are prerequisites to an actual connection between human beings. Consider any relationship that really matters: spouse and spouse, parent and child, teacher and student, coach and athlete, doctor and patient- and, yes, salesperson and buyer. Each of these relationships constitutes a situation where people need to be able to communicate effectively with one another. In each scenario, meaningful conversations are essential, which means both sides need to be able to think and respond in the moment based not only on the topic, but also on the tone of the discussion and the complex interaction of variables like shared experiences and shared goals. ChatGPT has a lot going for it, but I have yet to have a conversation with it in which I felt I was discussing specific goals that were as important to the software as they were to me. Yet that is precisely what great sales conversations uncover. Scripts do not uncover those goals. Prompts do not uncover those goals. People do. Relationships do. One of the things we hear consistently from our clients in the sales and sales management training industry is that they don’t want their salespeople to come off sounding like robots. And yet, if we start relying on machines to feed us the right things to say to clients, that could easily become the reality! We often see salespeople reading negative tonality (such as sarcasm or disinterest) into emails and text messages where there was no intentional negative tonality. Then a new string of texts and emails begins, based on tonality that was never part of the initial message. Before you know it, the communication escalates to the point of anger and disagreement. The big what if question is: What if we found a way to humanize the exchange? What if we just picked up the phone and had a conversation to clear the air and quickly resolve any misunderstanding? The lesson here is a simple one: Our goal as professional salespeople is to humanize interactions, and that means having better, deeper, richer, and more authentic conversations. Think about the best conversation that you ever had with a salesperson (or anyone else, for that matter). What made it work? I’ll bet that conversation was awesome because it was a true dialogue, not a monologue, or a pair of monologues proceeding more or less simultaneously. I’ll bet you enjoyed that great discussion because you felt you could trust the person you were speaking with, and because there were great questions you couldn’t possibly have predicted ahead of time, questions that took the conversation to a deeper and more meaningful level. I remember listening to Denis Waitley, one of the greatest authors and motivational speakers of our time, share his story of hosting a dinner party to get to know his neighbors as he and his family had just moved into the neighborhood. As the evening went on, he socialized with everyone and got to know each of the guests. As it happened, though, he never really got the chance to share his own story. He was fine with that. He was there to get to know them. When the party was over, as he took the trash out, he overheard one of his neighbors saying, “That Denis sure is an amazing guy — he was so interested in us!” Let’s look at that story through the lens of today’s seller. Even with instant access to oceans of data, to industry information, to insights about a buyer’s communication style and preferences, even with powerful artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT at their fingertips, sales professionals still need to listen as well as Denis Waitley! They still need to begin earning trust, building upon that trust, furthering that trust, and then figure out the best way to be sure they always maintain that trust. When it comes to winning business and protecting that business, there always needs to be a strong relationship with all the key stakeholders. Relationships always have been, and always will be, forged through commitments made and fulfilled because of meaningful conversations. Relationships always have been and always will be built on trust and communication. Knowing how to lead a conversation that helps both the buyer and the seller determine the right solution is the key to success in selling, and it is also a uniquely human skill that will never go out of style. Just as Denis Waitley found out, authentic curiosity and the ability to ask personalized, spontaneous questions really pays off when it comes to building and sustaining relationships. The very best salespeople recognized a long time ago just how important it is to ask situationally and personally relevant questions in real time… and to operate, consistently and empathetically, on the principle that telling is not selling. A resource like ChatGPT may be able to repeat and/or rephrase those important lessons, but, as of this writing, it is unable to live by them. For that, you will need an effective salesperson. And we don’t see that changing any time soon.
The 2023 Sales Dilemma Susan Powers, Peak Sales/Sandler Salespeople have never had a greater advantage and opportunity than they do today. They can secure even greater advantages and opportunities with each passing day. That’s because artificial intelligence, machine learning, and technology continue to make advancements that help salespeople develop closer and stronger relationships with their clients and prospects. Yet a lot of salespeople and sales leaders don’t see it that way. They see their main dilemma as one of getting, not just more leads, but more qualified leads. Fortunately, the sales-enabling and marketing-enabled technologies now driven by AI are making this goal much easier to attain– at least, for organizations that grasp the power of these technologies and leverage them. But for many salespeople, there remains an underlying, and far more serious, dilemma, one of attitude. They are stuck in the 21st-century version of a very old problem, one that has been known for decades as the Scarcity Mindset. They fear that artificial intelligence, machine learning, and technology will replace them. These salespeople worry that buyers will no longer need them around to make an intelligent buying decision. They fear there will not be enough to go around. The reality we face is simultaneously more encouraging and more challenging than that. AI will not replace salespeople… but AI-empowered salespeople will replace those salespeople who choose not to embrace the future of selling. Selling is still about choosing abundance over scarcity, and it is still about trust and honest communication– the two most important ingredients in any relationship. Today’s sellers need to remember that when their organization’s marketing technologies deliver those sought-after high-quality leads, their job is to initiate trust, build trust, maintain trust, and further trust. And the best way of doing this is to lean into, not away from, the revolutionary sales-enabling technologies that have been made available to us. To initiate trust, show up fully prepared for the first call or meeting, leveraging AI to know as much about the prospect, their industry, and their competition as possible. To build trust, use what was discovered in the first call or meeting and continue researching the solutions that will best meet the needs of the prospect– even if it means that you are recommending a competitor or other solution that is not your own. This approach goes a long way indeed in building trust. Once we have received a qualified lead, initiated trust in the first call, and built trust through honest adult-to-adult truth-based communication to create a relationship that wins the business, we must also maintain trust. All too often, this responsibility gets left out of the equation. We lose track of the relationship once the deal “closes.” So: Stop thinking in terms of closing! There will inevitably be delivery or other customer service issues; there will probably also be price increases at some point; there be unexpected shifts in the buyer’s world that neither side can predict right now. These and other events will require a strong relationship if they are to be handled properly and if the relationship is to grow over time. As sellers, we need to stay more informed than our competition, and if you think AI isn’t part of that, you’re not reading the horizon well. We need to get out in front of the challenge that shows up in our buyer’s world, whatever form it takes, and we need to share relevant information with our buyers and their stakeholders. That means delivering difficult information when necessary, and in a way that strengthens, rather than weakens, the relationship. Humans will always have an advantage over computers in this regard. When clients know that they can count on us to deliver honest but difficult news, they know that they can also trust us to take care of their needs as a customer. Furthering trust means that as sellers, we are leaning into AI and other information technology as much as possible, so we can make sure we see trends and shifts in the business and/or industry we serve before they impact our clients. When we can proactively bring information and insights to our clients that could help bring about advanced solutions, or help them to mitigate risks that connect to potential changes in their industry, this furthers the trust between the buyer and the salesperson. I began this article with the dilemma that most sellers care about: filling their funnel with qualified sales leads they can pursue. However, the real dilemma today’s sellers face has to do with a decision: embracing either the Scarcity Mindset or the Abundance Mindset. In 2024, embracing the Abundance Mindset means embracing artificial intelligence, machine learning, and sales enabling technologies with everything we’ve got. Gone are the days of Chief Revenue Officers or Chief Sales Officers accepting the excuse that part (or all!) of their sales force can’t even open an email or use a laptop. If you choose not to adapt to the world in which you now live and work, you will be left behind. That’s not scare talk. That’s reality. Here, then, is a wake-up call for today’s seller, regardless of tenure, age, or perceived influence within the company: We must all get on board the train and become AI-empowered sellers. If we don’t find our seat on this train, we will be replaced by salespeople who are leveraging all that AI, machine learning, and sales-enabling technologies have to offer. If you doubt this, compare the recent commission checks of those who are embracing the AI revolution with those who are not. I predict that you will instantly see the difference! Sales leaders: Are you certain you and your sellers are on board the train that’s heading toward the future of selling? Or do you feel like you or your team may have been left behind at the station? If you’d like to know more about how to make the shift, and/or how to get buy-in and adoption from your team on the ideas I have shared here, I would love to hear your story.
Do you want to get rich quickly? Very simple: Buy a business for its actual value, and sell it back right away for what the business owner values it. Many business owners overvalue their own business (after all, isn’t your business the most beautiful baby in the world?). What do you need to pay attention to in order to make sure that you get the valuation you want when the time is ripe? Looking at your business through the eyes of a buyer Regardless of whether you want to sell your business (or pass it on to your children) in one or in 100 years, looking at your company through the eyes of a buyer can help you identify your top priorities to develop a stronger business – and ultimately get the valuation that you want. Based on experience, readings, and many conversations with experts in the business of buying and selling companies, I have identified 10 key points that can derail your company value. There are obviously many more – I selected these 10 because of their considerable impact on business valuation. The goal of this article is to generate self-reflection through two questions: On a scale from 1 through 10, how is your company performing on each of these 10 points below? Which of these points should be your top priority for improvement? What defines the value of your business? “There are two pieces to valuing a business, says Mark Campbell with
In today’s ever-expanding “gig economy,” outsourcing entry-level tasks and job roles has become commonplace. But a growing number of organizations are exploring and adopting outsourcing for higher-level functions, too. Small to mid-sized sales organizations are increasingly outsourcing the sales function – from the sales rep role to executive sales management – and finding success with this new paradigm. What are some key reasons for sales outsourcing (and some reasons why a company might not want to)? Let’s take a look: Advantages of Outsourcing Your Sales Function While businesses have learned it can be lucrative to outsource frontline sales functions such as lead generation, now, small to mid-sized businesses are beginning to understand benefits at higher levels – sales leadership levels – in the sales organization. The use of outsourced fractional sales leaders, is rapidly gaining recognition as a means of attaining an essential competitive advantage in the marketplace.
🤔What is your question-to-statement ratio? 🎓Register for our CEO Workshop about “How to be a better coach for your team” on Tuesday, May 2nd at 12 pm EST on Zoom.
Our borrowers often ask us, “Is it better to buy an established business or start up a business?” It’s a reasonable question for those looking to exit their current employment or invest in a business for another income stream. While it may make sense in specific industries to start a business, the benefits of purchasing an established business, along with the security it provides to a new business owner, make a strong case for searching for a company to acquire. Established companies typically have the following positive attributes: Existing customer base Established supplier channels Brand recognition Established market share Sustainable and predictable cash flow Employees that generally transfer with the sale Established reputation Seller consulting period (up to 12 months post-closing) Ability to start earning an owner’s salary from day one In addition to the above benefits, if financing is needed, a lender will typically be willing to lend more for a borrower to acquire an established business than to start up a business, typically at a more favorable interest rate. The SBA allows a lender to finance up to 90% of total project costs to acquire a business. While SBA policy also allows 90% financing on start-ups, most lenders will require more equity from the borrower ranging from 20% to sometimes 30% of the project costs. Additionally, some lenders shy away from financing start-ups altogether, so your lender pool will be much smaller when seeking start-up financing. There are resources available to search for listings, one of the largest being BizBuySell. Engaging the help of a business broker in the market you wish to purchase a business is also helpful. A reputable broker or M&A advisor will often have access to off-market listings and a good pulse on available inventory on the market. Buyers should prepare to provide a list of their search criteria, including but not limited to industry type, revenue size, EBITDA, location, sale price, etc. If you are considering purchasing a business, it is never too soon to start building your team of trusted advisors and lenders. A deal team should ideally consist of the following: M&A advisor/broker CPA for financial due diligence and structuring of legal entities for tax purposes Banker, if financing is needed An attorney with business acquisition experience Lastly, if you purchase a business and utilize bank financing, the bank will engage a third-party valuation firm to confirm the company’s value. A valuation will assist you with determining if your offer price is reasonable or needs to be renegotiated.
🤔If your employees could choose their leader, would they choose you? 🎓This is one of the questions of “The CEO Test” by Adam Bryant and Kevin Sharer, which we will discuss at our free CEO Book Club on Tuesday, June 6 at noon EST / 6 pm CET on Zoom. Register
It felt like the only thing we could agree on, is that we couldn’t agree on anything. Have you been there before? We had been discussing our 10-year vision for 45 minutes with the board of directors, and the conversation was going in circles between two opposing views. I felt stuck. I was championing one of these views, I knew that my point of view was right, and I also knew that my emotions were clouding my judgment – I couldn’t see a way out of this deadlock. Why was the other side so stubborn? As the leader of the organization should I simply impose my point of view and be done with this? Arguing is not persuading As this experience illustrates, arguing to prove a point is not the best way to change the minds of other team members. “If anything, arguing makes people more intransigent,” explains
Join our CEO Growth Workshop on Tuesday March 7 at noon EST (on Zoom) to learn about “How to have difficult and uncomfortable conversations – and how you can give more impactful developmental feedback.” 😖72% of employees think that their performance would improve with more feedback. And yet Gallup has found that only 26% of employees strongly agree that the feedback they receive helps them do better work. ❤️ When done properly, feedback is a great way to improve yourself and to help your team members progress and take responsibility for their actions. How can you give better feedback? This is exactly the point of this workshop. By the end of this interactive workshop, you will have: 🎓Learned the 5 steps of a constructive feedback conversation. 🎓Experimented with these steps in role plays in a safe environment. 🎓Identified your next steps to implement your insights. Register here:
Happy New Year – and may 2023 be a prosperous and fulfilling year for you and yours! With that aspiration in mind, I’d like to pose an important question about goals, a big question we make a habit of sharing with our clients at this time of year. Every December, it seems, we set goals for ourselves (sometimes also known as “resolutions”) in a well-meaning effort to create sustainable positive change in our lives. And every January or February (or maybe March in a good year), most of us look back on those goals with a mixture of stress, denial, and regret because we know we didn’t follow through on them in the way we’d hoped we would. So the big question is, how do we break that cycle and set goals that stick? Here are seven powerful goal-setting tips we share with our clients that turn “resolutions” into results. Tie the goal to something truly important to you as a person. (Spoiler alert: It isn’t money.) Each of us has at least one unique life goal that means a great deal to us on a deeply personal level. I don’t know what that goal is for you: it might be a trip around the world, a significant charitable contribution that helps you honor the memory and legacy of a loved one, a fabulous new present you and your significant other can enjoy together all year long – something you know will bring you closer together. The possibilities are endless. I do know, though, that we all work harder for our personal goals than we work for somebody else’s. This year, let’s make a change. Instead of setting a goal based on depositing a certain amount of money, instead of setting a goal based on attaining a business goal that someone else has set for you, why not take the time to identify a goal that motivates you personally in a profound way? Then you can find a way to connect that powerful personal goal to a financial or business goal. For instance: Don’t just make the goal to earn your bonus; make the goal to earn the bonus so you can take that trip around the world that’s on your bucket list. Take a well-rounded approach. There’s nothing wrong with financial goals, of course. All the same, it’s important to set goals in several different areas of your life. Think of multiple goals that will motivate you to change the status quo for the better in terms of sales, health, spirituality, work, creativity, friends, mindset, and family. And once you have a sales goal that motivates you, you will also want to consider setting sub-goals that support your larger sales goal (such as daily behavioral and activity goals, account management goals, upselling goals, and cross-selling goals). Do this for each of the categories. Take some time to create a list of goals that goes both wide and deep! Once you’ve set a specific goal, break it into actionable, measurable chunks. Breaking the goal into smaller numbers allows you to identify the activities necessary to achieve it and track your progress toward attaining it. For example: To make my bonus, I want to secure twelve new clients, each with an average sales of $X. That means I need three such clients each quarter, which, based on my current numbers, I need to talk to Y number of new decision-makers each week and deliver Z number of presentations each month. Write your goals down and speak about them often. This simple step dramatically improves the statistical likelihood that you will achieve the goal. Build accountability. Once you have identified goals that genuinely matter to you, it’s a good idea to share your list with others you trust and discuss it with them. You may also want to consider creating an accountability-partner relationship with someone willing to share their goals with you, hold you accountable, and be held accountable in turn. Adjust as necessary. If you reach a point where you’ve exhausted your motivation and willingness to attempt to reach the goal, or if you find the goal you set was unrealistic, revise your goal. In the present tense, what you’re after is a goal that makes you feel that you are working toward something important. Find a goal that inspires you and that yields measurable signs of progress over time. Reward yourself. Sheryl Crow once sang, “Making miracles is hard work – most people give up before they happen.” Those words are essential reminders that much effort goes into achieving a meaningful goal. When you hit one, be sure to do something to celebrate! Follow these simple guidelines, and your experience with ineffective New Year’s “resolutions” that start fading on January 1 will be completely transformed.
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