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New Year's Eve 2011 and if you haven't set your goals for 2012 yet it is not too late.
However defining goals is much harder than it looks and I often think a lot of people are less successful than they could be if they had more clearly defined goals.
So what is a goal? My wife has just got in from the Blades game and apparently they beat Hartlepool by three goals to one! (We have a sign at the front door saying that a football fan and a normal person lives here)
Short term goal - get the ball in the net (opposing team's net that is)
Slightly longer term - win the match with more goals
Bit longer still - win the league or whatever they do
"Goals in writing are dreams with deadlines" according to Brian Tracy a highly successful business coach.
That helps me to define goals. Dream a bit about what you want and what you want to be. Write it down and then apply the SMART criteria.
I am sure you know what that is but just in case..........
Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Realistic
Time based
So a SMART, written down dream really does become a goal.
I always ask people when I start work with them to define their goals and most people either don't have any or just have what they think is a goals but it just a wish. For example some of the answers I get are:-
"To make a shed load of money"
And those who have thought it through a bit more might say
"To make a shed load of money as soon as possible"
So a SMART version of that goal might be "During 2012, I plan to steadily increase my earnings each month and by the end of the year will have earned £120,000"
It is specific, measurable and time based, but is it realistic? Again I think most people limit their expectations artificially, lower their sights, lower their goals and accept the easy way out - to do much the same as before.
If any person can achieve that goal, theoretically so can you. But maybe you are better working up to the income figure you want to achieve in a series of steps - that way you will accept your own goals and believe in them more.
A few years ago I wrote down my income goal simply "I will make £120,000 this year" Between March and June that year I bought a house and sold it again at a profit which made up a lot of this income but when I wrote the goal I assumed it would come from my core business. I was happy to hit the planned number but what I really wanted was a business that generated that amount each and every year!
So be specific. For example if your goals extend to owning a particular car, write your goal as though you were telling the salesman at the garage what you are looking for or writing your checklist for your own directory searches or filling in the form on Autotrader.
I will be writing more about goal setting very soon and have over the years used the techniques that I will tell you about very successfully to acquire a six bedroomed house in the country and a Rolls Royce!
For now just focus on these goals for you and your business and write them down. Send them to me if you wish and I'll help you work out how to achieve them.
Your personal income from drawings, wage, dividends
The sales turnover of your business
The Gross Profit
The Net Profit
Number of customers
To a Happy and Successful 2012.
11 August 2011 : The Diffference between Sales and Marketing
July 19 2011 : Get Money for Value - or not
6 June 2011 : Never give up on follow up
11 August 2011 : The Diffference between Sales and Marketing
What is the huge difference between sales and marketing
Anyone who has ever been on one of my training courses or worked with me on a marketing project, will know just how much emphasis I place on the answer to this.
For the sake of brevity, Marketing is a planning process and sales is an action process. Marketing is all about deciding what you are selling, who you are going to sell it to, what sales channels you are going to use and how much you are going to charge - it is also about a lot of other things but these are the essentials.
Effective selling - that is, cost effective selling - can only take place when you have answered all of the planning questions. It is exactly the same as the (rather overworked) example of booking a flight to your holiday destination which can't be done until you have decided where you are going, where you are going from, what class of ticket you want and how long you will be there.
Selling without planning becomes very , very expensive. When you have developed your marketing plan you will have a clear idea of who and where your customer is and how to reach them. This means that you may not have to use National TV to reach them. If you know who they are and where they are, you are in control of the least cost route to reaching them.
Far too many years ago, I took over the running of a National sales force of 34 field sales representatives in a company that did not have a marketing department and no marketing direction.
That is 34 well paid people. 34 fully financed company cars and 34 expense accounts.
All of them were cold calling anywhere they though best within their territories and most were slightly successful at selling the lowest priced products.
It took a while but after defining the target market groups for each product and re-defining the channels for each product, a telemarketing team was created and the number of field based reps reduced. The net effect was 35% increase in sales value and a 20% reduction in the cost of the sales team. Along the way management controls were put in and monitored to help each salesperson to make the most of each opportunity.
Why then, would a company go out and recruit a field based sales person without a marketing plan?
Why would they recruit a sales person without having any sales management experience or sales management controls?
The same question applies to those who place advertisements or spend money on any kind of marketing communication without placing that activity in the context of a well worked out marketing plan.
Somehow though, recruiting people without a framework for them to work within, seems a lot more expensive - and can mess up their lives for a bit.
July 19 2011 : Get Money for Value - or not
One of my clients is an IT company with a superb reputation for customer service and quality of their work. They were somewhat surprised a few months ago when a major customer of theirs in Derby decided to terminate their service contract and brought in a competitor.
They did all that they could to find out why and to rectify any problems but to no avail.
I have been to see my client today and am delighted to report that they have got their customer back but there are a few lessons we can either learn or re-learn from their experience.
The reason that they got the job back was that the company in Derby did not realise what a great level of service that they were getting from my client until they made the change to another IT service provider.
THIS IS BECAUSE THEY DIDN'T TELL THEM.
It is all very well being quietly great at what you do but if nobody knows it - if your customer doesn't know it and you lose the contract - you have less income to your business than you did before.
My IT client operated a great system of remotely identifying potential problems in their customer's computer system before they occurred and fixing them - but nobody knew.
Also, if they were ever called to fix a problem on site they looked for other problems and fixed those too and if they saw something that might be a problem later they fixed that too - but didn't tell anybody.
The company in Derby soon realised that they were missing something - not getting the service that they used to from the recently appointed contractor - and the contract is now re-instated at a much higher value and regular meetings and bulletins are used to make sure that they know what great value they are getting.
We all know a builder or a plumber or a car mechanic who will spend all day telling you what they have done before they present their bill which is why we think they are great value - that they have done a great job - that we will use them again - that we will introduce them to our friends and so on..........so what do you do to make money from the value you deliver?
If you would like some help to answer this please get in touch
6 June 2011 : Never give up on follow up
We know from experience and many studies just how important it is to follow up on sales visits and quotations. One US study even suggests that we optimise success with up to 12 follow up contacts. One of my clients told me this week that they had received a letter from a prospective customer telling him that his company had not been successful in their bid to supply them.
They have a system for these situations which involves a further call to identify the reasons for their lack of success.
Whilst going through the checklist with the prospective customer, the buyer who was giving the feedback stopped and said "Actually your bid was quite good - very good in fact. I can't understand why you didn't get the order. I haven't awarded the contract yet - the job's yours!"
So even when you have it in writing, even when it looks final - it isn't. Start a follow up system today and make sure you ask for feedback what ever the outcome.
