GOALS: You better have them

I read so much about goals and the importance having them. Every self help, sales, or motivational book or speaker tells us to have goals, write them down, and have a plan to achieve them. Why then, do so many people have a difficult time doing this? Why is that I just now sat down today (after 6 years of selling in my profession) to put pen to paper on goals (and a plan) to sell a product I am having difficulties selling? It's strange, I wonder if we are afraid of success, and all the work it will take to achieve and maintain it. The insanity of simply sitting down for a few minutes and working backward from our point of success is lost on so many of us. It is so insane, because it is so easy and a non brainer. I actually think the trouble with most people, is they don't know what they want. I had a regional sales director ask me before a call, " what do you want from this call?". Of course I told him that I wanted to sell my product. That logic tells me that I should approach a customer by telling him "Hi, I am here to sell you something". That is ridiculous. This, of course, is not what my regional sales director was getting at. We need to tell the customer what we do for him and what we have done for previous and current customers similar to him. I did not know how to approach this, because I had no goal (objective) other than SELLING him on a product that he did not know he needed. I will dig deeper into this in a later post. My point is that we need to start with the end in mind. Whether this is on a call, for a quarter, for a career, or for our lives. What do we want, how can we get it, and are we willing to pay the price. The first thing to do, TODAY, is to write down some goals. I don't care what they are, try it and see yourself achieve. Let me recommend Stephen Covey's 7 Habits for Highly Effective People as a start. Good luck and Good Selling.