Goals and Plans

We are well underway in the New Year. I hope you have taken time over the past few weeks to think and come up with a few goals you are committed to achieve this year.

If you have your goals identified, it is time to begin writing and preparing a plan to help you achieve these goals.

The “Plan” is the roadmap you will use to reach your goals.

Sometimes we have difficulty distinguishing between Goals and Plans.

James Clear in his article on Entrepreneur.com “Forget Setting Goals. Focus on This Instead.” does a great job explaining the difference in Goals and Plans or as he calls them “Systems”:

• “If you’re a coach, your goal is to win a championship. Your system is what your team does at practice each day.”
• “If you’re a writer, your goal is to write a book. Your system is the writing schedule that you follow each week.”
• “If you’re a runner your goal is to run a marathon. Your system is your training schedule for the month.”
• “If you’re an entrepreneur your goal is to build a million dollar business. Your system is your sales and marketing process.”

His premise in the article is if you only focused on the plan or system you would still reach your goals. It’s the plan or system that is most important not the goal.

I think this is mostly correct!

For example:

If your goal is to lose weight and you only focus on the scale each week will you lose weight?

Probably not!

But if you have a plan or system in place to control what you eat and requires you to increase your daily exercise routine do you really need a scale to reach your goal?

Again probably not!

All the stepping on the scales you do will do nothing to help you lose weight with the exception of the calories you may burn walking to the scales.

The same goes with setting goals to improve your sales. Just setting a goal will have little effect on your sales performance. It will be the plan or process you put in place that requires you to do the things each day to improve and grow your sales that will make the difference.

Before you say “Wes” you said in an earlier post that just by setting a goal and writing it down you are 10x more likely to achieve your goal. I still standby what I wrote.

While a goal without a plan or process is less likely to achieve the greatest results, a well thought out goal with commitment and written down is much better than no goal at all or a goal that you don’t take the time to write down.

Back to our example, if your goal is to lose weight this next year and are truly committed, even without a plan you will begin to watch what you eat and try to exercise more each day or week. If you can maintain this commitment, at the end of the year you will most likely step on the scale and weigh less. However, without a process or plan in place you may not be able to optimize your weight loss and begin to get discouraged at some point during the year and go back to eating as you did in the past.

Same goes with setting sales goals. Even without a plan, if you are committed to grow sales, you will increase your activities needed to grow and improve your sales. If you can keep up the pace your sales will improve and you can reach your goal. But without a plan or process in place this level of activity may and probably will slowly diminish as will the chances of reaching your sales goals.

So here’s my takeaway.

At the very least:

If you are struggling to come up with clear SMART goals that you can commit too, you may want to make sure you have a plan or process in place that will at least ensure you are headed in the right direction.

or

If you have a good clear goal you’re committed to achieve but can’t seem to put a plan together, make sure you write your goal down and share it with others you trust.

I’m not trying to give you a way out of the goal setting process but trying to make sure you do “something”.

I see too many Sales and Account Managers give up during this process and just drift along without a plan year after year. Never reaching their full potential or achieving their desired results. I encourage you not to find yourself in this position.

There is some very good information on the web to help you with the process. I would suggest going to MichaelHyatt.com. Michael Hyatt has devoted a great deal of time and effort in helping his readers understand the Goal Setting process. His thoughts are priceless.

Also, James Clear at JamesClear.com who I sited in this article writes a blog that discusses breaking bad habits and putting processes or systems in place to help you improve your everyday life.

You may also want to look back at past articles I have written on the topic of goal setting.

I believe setting good goals and creating a plan or process around these goals is clearly the way to best insure you achieve what you desire.

Let’s make this year our best year ever!

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Thank you for taking the time to read this article.

 

Now let’s get out there and over-deliver!