“How did your 2015 go?”
“Good.”
“Did you make your annual sales goal?”
“Ah, I don’t know…” or “I didn’t have a goal…” or the sound of crickets.
This conversation has played itself out over and over again these early weeks in January.
If this might be you—you don’t know if you achieved your one, BIG, measurable goal for 2015 or you didn’t have one—you can pretty much be assured that you didn’t make it.
And if you do know your goal and your results, did you hit the target?
Let me drive this point home with a story.
You’re in the Auckland airport, and you’re getting on your flight. As you board, you pass the Captain at the door. He’s talking to his co-pilot, and you overhear him say, “Not sure where we’re headed today. We don’t need a flight plan. Let’s just take off and see how it goes. I’m sure we’ll get somewhere.”
I’m not getting on that plane! Are you???
Friends, you are on that plane if you don’t know where you want your business to go. No goal. No go.
What are the odds you are going to get where you want to go if you don’t know where you want to go?
Pretty close to zero.
You might get someplace on luck. But does luck repeat itself? Most likely 2016 will be a wandering year.
Or you can change it.
This year can be the end of your wandering. This year can be the beginning of a very strategic, planned year that delivers the results you want: more customers, more money and less stress all around.
Are you willing to do a few simple things right now, in January, so that you’re smiling at the end of 2016?
First, figure out what was broken about 2015 and write it down.
Broken might sound a bit extreme. Maybe it was just cracked a little or nicked up in undesirable ways.
Next, what’s the one (ONE and only one), measurable (you have to be able to measure it) goal you will set and point all your efforts towards achieving in 2016?
Write down the goal. Take out some paper…right now…and write down your goal. Not just thinking about it. Writing it down. Then it’s really real. Post it where you’ll see it every day.
What should this year look like? And what will actually make a real difference in your money, your growth, your results, that green stuff you want to put in your pocket?
Sure, there are more steps. But these two simple ones hand you a pretty good start to tacking to your goal.
Do 2016 differently. Or live with the same results.
Go forth and do great things,
Martha Hanlon and Chris Williams
P.S. You’ll notice that our little conversations here are coming now with requests for you to take some small steps. If you would like some guidance through a series of steps that will yield BIG results, check out our Customers Are the Answer webinar that starts in February.