Archive for goals
What Types of Goals Are You Setting?
Posted by: | CommentsBecause we are beginning a new year, it seems natural for many of us to set new goals for our business. We set goals to earn X dollars this year, or to increase our email list by Y percent. We do this because we know our goals need to be measurable so we know when we achieved them.
When I was speaking with my coach earlier this week she pointed out that these types of goals are known as outcome goals – based on getting a certain result. The problem with outcome goals is ultimately they are outside of your control.
Yes, you can do things like provide excellent service, have competitive prices and marketing like crazy to increase your chances of achieving an outcome goal. However, the final decision to buy is not in your hands. And all sorts of things outside your control can impact the outcome: a competitor’s fire sale, a downturn in the economy, a new product competing with yours, the weather.
The downside to this is when you don’t achieve an outcome goal because of factors outside your control, it is easy to loose your motivation and enthusiasm.
Does this mean we should stop setting outcome goals? No. They can be motivational and are easy to measure. But we also need to set other types of goals. Specifically, performance goals and process goals.
Performance goals, also known as mastery goals, are about how you perform. They measure how good you are at what you do. Since you are comparing your current performance to past performance and measuring improvement, this type of goal is entirely within your control. Even when you don’t achieve an outcome goal, you can achieve a performance goal related to the same area.
Process goals are how you are going to do certain things, usually how you are going to achieve your outcome goals. What specific actions will you take? Like performance goals, process goals are entirely within your control.
How does this work in your business?
Suppose you set an outcome goal of selling an additional $5,000 this quarter. You might set a performance goal for yourself to become a better salesperson. Becoming better at closing sales will make it easier for you to achieve your outcome goal.
To achieve your outcome goal you will also want to set process goals. Suppose you know from past experience that the average new customer spends $500 with you. To achieve your outcome goal you will likely need ten new customers. Also suppose that for every ten cold calls you make, you get an average of one new client. Based on past experience, you would likely need to make 100 cold calls to get ten new clients and earn that additional $5,000.
Therefore your outcome goal is $5,000. Your performance goal is to improve your sales skills and your process goal is to make 100 cold calls.
At the end of the quarter if you made your 100 cold calls and found that your improved sales skills meant you landed 15 new clients instead of the projected ten you could be very happy with having achieved your process and performance goals. But if the slower economy meant your new clients spent $250 each instead of the $500 past performance has projected, you would still not have achieved your outcome goal.
If you review your goals and find that you have mostly outcome goals, you might want to consider adding a few performance and process goals to your list.
Andrea J. Stenberg
Make Your Goals Sound Like They’re Right Around the Corner
Posted by: | CommentsSeth Godin wrote “If you want people to embrace your version of the future, talk about it like it’s right around the corner, not on another planet.”
“For example: “We’re going to launch a new product next year” sounds a lot more distant than handing someone a prototype and saying, “this launches on January 3rd at 2 pm at CES.”"
What Seth was talking about is making things concrete to get others to buy into what you’re doing. But what about your buy-in?
When you create goals for yourself and your business, have you made it sound believable and urgent to yourself? Or is it pie-in-the-sky and waaaaaaay down the road?
Even really big goals can creep up on you if you aren’t paying close attention. We need to set real deadlines for our goals to make them seem urgent. And not just the final deadline of “this launches at …”. We need to break the big goals into manageable steps and give each of these steps a concrete deadline too.
This all sounds simple but it’s not always as easy as it sounds; particularly when you are juggling multiple goals.
This week I’ve been working on my goals for this quarter. I bought six different colours of post-it notes -one for each goal. I wrote down everything I needed to do for each goal on a different post-it. I took a piece of Bristol board and divided it into 12 squares: one for each of the next 12 weeks. Then I pasted the post-its into the square it was due.
Once I was done I realized the first six weeks were jammed up with tasks, but there was nothing for the final six weeks. There were two problems. I hadn’t broken all the tasks up into small enough chunks and I was trying to get everything done at once, which isn’t possible unless I give up sleep, eating and clone myself.
One example: I want to contact 15 local groups that might need speakers. I wrote on one post-it: create a list of 15 groups and contact them. There’s no reason it all has to be done on one day. I could break this up into small chucks – say contact three groups a week for five weeks. This is a more manageable task and leaves time for other things to happen during those weeks.
So if you find your really big goals are sneaking up on you unaccomplished, check to see if you’re giving yourself deadlines that sound real to you. If they sound real and urgent, you’ll give them more attention.
Andrea J. Stenberg
Goals Revisited: Sometimes You Need to Stop to Move Forward
Posted by: | CommentsThe last day of September: where did the summer go? The third quarter of 2008 was particularly challenging for me. I like to accomplish things; concrete things I can check off on a list and hold up as being complete.
Sometimes I think I should have been a brick layer so I could actually see my progress.
But this last quarter didn’t involve a lot of checking off items from my list. In fact, I never did get my third quarter list written on my white board. Instead, I spent a lot of time that felt like floundering. It was painful and frustrating. I hated most of it, even though it was summer.
And it was the most productive three months in the past three years!
What?
I didn’t realize it until after my weekly coaching call yesterday. My coach suggested it was time to stop worrying about micromanaging my days on our calls and start looking at the bigger picture. I don’t need any more help getting through the days. I’m ready to start creating something bigger.
These past three months, while painful, were a necessary growing period for me. I spent the time re-evaluating my goals and vision; figuring out what I want to do when I grow up. In January when I set my goals for 2008, social media was barely on my radar. I had no idea it would become a fundamental part of my business. This past summer I ground to a halt because I couldn’t continue working towards goals that didn’t reflect this major shift. Read More→
When It Comes To Your Marketing, Do You Know Where You’re Going?
Posted by: | CommentsYogi Berra said, “If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll end up somewhere else.” Too many people end up somewhere else with their marketing because they don’t have concrete goals for their marketing campaigns.
But you already know your goal – increase sales. Isn’t that enough?
No. You need to be more specific. Are you are looking for immediate cash flow or to gain long term customers? Do you want new customers or new businesses from previous customers? Do you have a specific product or service you are promoting or is this a campaign promoting your entire business?
After answering these questions, also consider a concrete number of sales or the total sales volume you want. And include a time frame – by what date will you achieve this goal?
Aiming for the Right Target
Your goals will determine the type of marketing campaign you embark on. If you are looking for new sales from existing customers, your campaign will look very different from one aimed at attracting new customers.
Marketing to previous customers may include letters or phone calls reminding them of follow-up actions they should take, letting them know about new services or even just a friendly reminder that you still exist. Attracting new clients may include advertising, sales letters, or cold calling.
Without setting a specific goal, your marketing campaign might end up talking about the wrong things or targeting the wrong people.
Motivation
Many people hate marketing. They feel uncomfortable, hate to blow their own horns, or feel it is taking time away from money-making activities. And we all know avoiding something we hate is all too easy. But if you have clear, written goals for your marketing campaign, they can act as motivation to keep you going.
If you have set a goal for generating $5,000 in new business it will be much easier to find the time to do the marketing than if you just have a vague notion that you will increase your sales. And if you’ve written down why you want the $5,000 and what you’ll do with it, you will find it even more motivating.
Know if You Succeeded
Engaging in a marketing campaign can be costly (in time or money) so this is not something you want to do by the seat of your pants. You need to know that not only will you recoup the direct costs of the campaign but earn additional income as well.
Different marketing techniques work better for some types of businesses than others. You need a way to gauge whether this marketing strategy is working for you. Setting a clear goal that includes a sales total or number of new customers will allow you to gauge whether this campaign was worth your time and money. Next time you’ll have a better idea of whether this type of marketing strategy should be repeated.
Final Steps
Before you begin your next marketing campaign, remember to answer these questions:
- Who are you targeting?
- What are you promoting?
- How much of an increase are you aiming for?
- Why do you want this increase in sales?
- What will it mean to you, your business and your life if you achieve it?
- By what date will you achieve it?
Answering these questions will help make sure you don’t end up somewhere else.
Andrea J. Stenberg
Can Using the Law of Attraction Help My Business? Part 2 – Knowing What You Want
Posted by: | CommentsThere are four key steps to consciously using the Law of Attraction in your life and business: desire, belief and expectation, action, and receiving.
Desire
At first glance desire is easy. We know what we want – don’t we?
Not always.
Sometimes we think we should want certain things – things society or our mother have told us are appropriate. Other times we want things by default – everyone wants a million dollars, right?
Goals need to align with our values
When we think about what we want – in business we call this goal setting – we need to get really clear about what is truly important to us. In February I wrote a post about identifying our values. Sometimes we set goals that go against our values. When we do that, we have trouble achieving them – attracting them if you will.
While researching my book I interviewed a woman who has a small but a successful consulting practice. She gets to live in her small town, work with clients she likes and spend time with her family. She’s happy with her business and her life. But she wasn’t always this content.
A few years earlier she’d been working with a coach and had set a goal for growing her business. She had big plans. She was going after large corporate clients. It would mean prestige, money and travel. She’d have to take on staff. She’d be going somewhere.
Then one day she paused. She had started her business because she’d been in the corporate world and hated it. She hated the culture, the politics, the workload, the big city.
These big plans for growing her business taking her in a direction she didn’t want to go. She didn’t want to work with big corporate clients – she liked the smaller clients she had. She didn’t want to travel – she liked being home with her family. She didn’t want to hire staff – she liked flying solo. She didn’t need the big bucks her plan would lead to – she earned enough to be satisfied.
So she scrapped her big plans and continued running her small consulting firm and enjoying her life.
The point is she had made a goal that went against what she valued. Luckily, she recognized this before going to far along the wrong path.
Life’s a struggle when our goals aren’t in sync with our values
A lot of people who aren’t as in touch with what they value don’t pause; they don’t have a moment where they realize they have the wrong goals. They keep heading in the wrong direction, but their goals are not in sync with their values. When this happens, things are a struggle.
Let’s use me as an example. When I first started out in business, I was a copywriter – I wrote marketing and sales materials for businesses (I still do). My role models where successful direct mail copywriters. You know, that stuff that comes in an envelope with ten pages of emotional writing telling you how you’re life will be transformed if you will just buy this product. I was working to be just like them.
The problem was, I hate doing that kind of writing. It’s not that I think there’s anything wrong with it. The people who do it are just fine people. It’s just not my thing.
So here I was working hard to attract more clients to give me copywriting work that I didn’t really want to do. Is it any wonder that I wasn’t getting anywhere? My business was a struggle. I found it hard to get motivated to write my own marketing materials – and I’m a writer!
And all this time I had written a purpose (or mission) statement for my business that read: “To use my writing and speaking skills to tell stories that excite, inspire and teach people.” I had it, but my goals didn’t match it or my values.
But when I began listening to my purpose statement and started making changes in my business plans, things became a lot easier.
Now I’m attracting clients I like and work that excites me. Speaking and teaching opportunities are falling in my lap. Before, I was having trouble getting motivated. Now I’m leaping out of bed at 4 or 5 am to start work.
All because my goals are aligned with my values and purpose.
So if you want to use the Law of Attraction to improve your business and achieve your goals, you’d better make sure your goals are aligned with your values.
But I’m not finished with goals.
Goals must be clear, detailed and specific
In order to use the Law of Attraction effectively, you need to make your goals clear, detailed and specific.
Remember in my previous post how I mentioned the Cheryl Richardson exercise I used to find my first post-baby full time job? I didn’t just say, “I want a job”. I wrote out very specific details about the type of job I wanted. I could almost picture the place I would be working. And it was very close to what I got.
That’s what you need to do.
Whatever your goal, make it specific. Don’t just say I want to increase revenue. Say, “I want to increase revenue this quarter by 25%.” Then get specific. What products are you going to sell more of? Put dollar values beside each one.
Whatever your goal, you need to be able to see it, taste it, feel it.
Why is this important?
I think that a lot of the time, we have opportunities in front of us. They’re there all the time. They’re coming out of the woodwork.
We just don’t see them.
We don’t recognize opportunities for what they are. It’s just like when you’re walking down the street, late for a meeting. You can walk right past your best friend because you’re thinking about something else.
By having clear – and written – goals, we recognize opportunities for what they are. When someone comes along and says, “the symphony is looking for a full time manager,” we don’t walk away because we’re not a musician and had never considered that even musicians need administrative and marketing help. We say, “gee, that job is exactly what I wanted. I’ll apply right way!”
Tomorrow I’ll write about the next step: belief and expectation. And I promise, it’s not airy fairy, woo woo stuff. I’ll have some very practical ways to put this step of the Law of Attraction to work.
Andrea J. Stenberg
