Setting your Goals

Goal setting is a powerful way to motivate yourself to achieve your dreams and increase your sales. It is just as important to set personal goals, as professional goals.  The process of setting goals helps you choose where you want your business to go. By knowing precisely what you want to achieve, you know where you have to concentrate your efforts. You'll also quickly spot the distractions that would otherwise lure you from your course. More than this, properly-set goals can be incredibly motivating, and as you get into the habit of setting and achieving goals, you'll find that your self-confidence builds fast.

The following broad guidelines will help you to set effective goals:

• State each goal as a positive statement: Express your goals positively – 'Execute this technique well' is a much better goal than 'Don't make this stupid mistake.'
• Be precise: Set a precise goal, putting in dates, times and amounts so that you can measure achievement. If you do this, you will know exactly when you have achieved the goal, and can take complete satisfaction from having achieved it.
• Set priorities: When you have several goals, give each a priority. This helps you to avoid feeling overwhelmed by having too many goals, and helps to direct your attention to the most important ones.
• Write goals down and post them where you will see them: This crystallizes them and gives them more force. By seeing them everyday, they will stay fresh in your mind and you will stay focused.
• Keep short-term goals small: Keep the low-level goals you are working towards small and achievable. If a goal is too large, then it can seem that you are not making progress towards it. Keeping goals small and incremental gives more opportunities for reward.
• Set goals on your personal performance, not others actions: You should take care to set goals over which you have as much control as possible. It can be quite dispiriting to fail to achieve a personal goal for reasons beyond your control! In business, these could be bad business environments or unexpected effects of government policy.  If you base your goals on personal performance, then you can keep control over the achievement of your goals and draw satisfaction from them.
• Set realistic goals: It is important to set goals that you can achieve. All sorts of people (employers, parents, media, society) can set unrealistic goals for you. They will often do this in ignorance of your own desires and ambitions. Alternatively you may set goals that are too high, because you may not appreciate either the obstacles in the way or understand quite how much skill you need to develop to achieve a particular level of performance. 

When you have achieved a goal, take the time to enjoy the satisfaction of having done so. Think about the results of achieving this goal and how this goal affects your other goals.  If the goal was a significant one, reward yourself appropriately.  Set a new goal that builds off of the one you have just achieved.  Remember too that your goals will change as time goes on. Adjust them regularly to reflect growth in your knowledge and experience, and, if goals do not hold any attraction any longer, then consider letting them go.