By Bill Gibson
During my recent tour throughout South Africa speaking to Business Owners, sponsored by Nedbank Small Business Services I talked about the fact that successful business owners, executives, sales people and entrepreneurs are goal driven people. KAYA FM has asked me to expand on this for their community of businesses.
First off, goal setting is one of the most important habits and abilities that an individual can have. According to a long time friend of mine, Dr. Lee Pulos, Clinical Psychologist and Sports Psychologist, “having a focus on a self-determined destiny or goal, is the one quality consistently found in people who are high achievers”.
Dr Lee Pulos goes on to explain, “Only 4% of the population have goals that are written. The 4% that have written goals achieve them 95% of the time”
The Yale University Study in 1953 really drives home the importance of goals.
In 1953 the Graduating Class were asked if they had written goals and a plan
Only 3% had such goals 20 years later…they researched the same people. The result… the 3% were worth more in financial terms than all the other 97% put together. A great reason to have a goal guided life.
By the way, that 3% also scored very high on their level of joy and happiness.
When you are setting your goals it is important to make sure that they are achievable goals and targets. One of the common reasons for depression is continually having goals that are unfulfilled.
According to Dr. Lee Burke, “children that grow up to be happy children are continually given goals by their parents, but they are achievable ones”. Achievable goals create happier people. So, keep setting new but attainable goals and maybe some day you will laugh as often as a child. A child laughs on an average of 400 times a day, the average adult laughs 15 times a day.
Following, are some of the tips around goal setting, target setting and achieving results.
Make Your Goal Specific With Timelines
The difference between a dream and a goal is “a goal is a dream with a specific deadline or timeline”. The new Soccer Stadiums, Gautrain, Airports and Highway Improvements throughout South Africa is one of the best examples of how a deadline brought many dreams to fruition.
Make Them SMART Goals
| S – | Specific |
| M – | Measurable |
| A – | Attainable |
| R – | Realistic |
| T – | Time Limited |
Break Them Into Smaller Chunks
Annual Target -R30M
1st Quarter = R6M
2nd Quarter = R7M
3rd Quarter = R8M
4th Quarter = R9M
1
st Quarter = R600K
January R1.5M
February R2.0M
March R2.5M
January – Break it down to 15 working days at R100K per day.
Put An Action Plan Together
If your average sale is R5000 and it takes 5 calls to close one deal you need 75 sales calls to close 15 deals @ R5000 to give you R75,000.
That means 5 calls per day to land 1 sale. If you have 20 salespeople they each do 5 calls a day. They will each close 1 sale a day at R5,000 x 20 salespeople which equals R100,000 per day x 15 days = R1.5M. The action plan is 5 sales calls a day per salesperson.
Set Up A Measurement System
What gets measured gets managed and what gets managed gets done. Measure the activities, number of sales, average sale, etc. Do short term measurement…by the hour, day part or by the day. That way you stay on top of the situation. You know whether you are ahead or behind.
Do Not Give Up
This man…
- Failed in business at age 31
- Was defeated in a Legislative Race age 32
- Failed again at business 34
- Experienced the death of his sweetheart at age 35
- Had a nervous breakdown at age 36
- Lost an election at age 38
- Lost a Congressional Race at age 43
- Lost a Congressional Race at age 46
- Lost a Congressional Race at age 48
- Lost a Senatorial Race at age 55
- Failed in an effort to become Vice-president at age 56
- Lost a Senatorial Race at age 58
- Was elected President of the United States of America at the age of 60
It was Abraham Lincoln! When he failed he failed forward. See failure and mistakes as just information. Success and failure are not opposites. Failure is part of success.
Thomas Edison, after trying 9,999 ways to perfect the electric light bulb insisted. “I did not fail. I just discovered another way not to invent the electric light bulb”.
Bill Gibson will be our first specialist to speak at the KAYA FM series of events that will kick off in August. Hope you will join us.
Bill, is an author, speaker, entrepreneur, sales specialist, executive coach, master marketer and superb communicator. He is the author of the book Boost Your Business In Any Economy, The Art And Science Of Problem Solving audio program, the 25 Module Complete Sales Action System, the 8 module Managing Complex Business Relationship System, the 43 Module Professional Sales Representative Career Program and the three part Business Success Series Audio CD and Manual Program.
Bill has spoken to over one million people worldwide, he is a Canadian who resides in South Africa and is the Chairperson of Knowledge Brokers International S.A. (Pty) Ltd. If you would like to hire Bill as a Keynote speaker, trainer or consultant or for more information on his sales, marketing, service and entrepreneurial systems as well as his Call Centre Collections, Sales and Service programs you can contact him at +27 11 784 1720 or email bill@kbitraining.com. Click here to view Bill on youtube.