Have you ever set goals in your business or your personal life in the New Year, only to have Christmas roll around again and you didn’t reach them? It’s disappointing and discouraging when that happens. Here are several tools to help you set and achieve significant goals. I’ve used these in my own life and business for decades, and I’ve taught them to many floor dealers.
Get your heart pounding.
I like goals that get me so excited I want to leap out of bed in the morning. For example, over the past Summer I set a goal to become a wingsuit flyer. This is a kind of extreme skydiving. (Look it up on Youtube.) In order to begin training for wingsuit, you must complete a minimum of 200 traditional skydives. As of this writing, I’ve completed 48 dives, and have earned my “A” skydiving license. This is a goal that definitely gets me so excited.
What are one or two business or personal goals you would like to accomplish this year which are so exciting you feel energized just thinking about it them?
Write it down.
If it’s not written down it’s not a goal, it’s a fantasy. Writing down your goals helps you get very clear on exactly what it is you want, and how to get there.
Get very specific.
Let’s say that you want to increase your dealership’s revenue. Set an exact dollar amount as your revenue goal, and give yourself a target date. For example, you could write down that you want to increase your revenue by $400,000 over last year, and you want your monthly revenue to reflect this by August 1st.
Create a plan.
Make a list of all the steps you will need to complete in order to reach your goal. Let’s say that you’re currently working Monday through Friday, you spend a couple of days per week on the sales floor, and you’d like to take Fridays off to work on your golf game. (I’ve had several floor dealer coaching clients set this as a goal and achieve it.) Ask yourself what you would need to put in place in order to take Friday’s off. Your task list might look something like this:
- Promote one of my part-time salespeople to full time in order to cover for me when I’m gone on Fridays.
- Create a job description for the new position so I know that everything that I had previously been doing on Fridays gets handled properly.
- Implement a past-customer marketing system to increase revenue and help cover the cost of the salesperson’s increased pay.
For the sake of space I’ve simplified this task list a great deal, but this gives you an idea of the thinking involved.
Time blocking.
These are appointments you set with yourself to get the tasks done to reach your goals. In the last example you might block out from 8:00AM to 10:00AM every Monday and Wednesday to create a job description and implement a past customer marketing system, two of the tasks necessary to take Friday’s off.
Once you time-block your appointments, you must treat them as sacrosanct. Let’s say you’re at an appointment with a prospect who is interested in buying $10,000 worth of hardwood. During the meeting would you check your email, take phone calls, surf the web, or send a text? Of course not! Treat your time-blocked appointments with the same level of respect as an appointment with a prospect by showing up on time and being fully present and engaged.
If you would like help setting exciting goals for 2020, shoot me an email at Support at FlooringSuccessSystems dot com, and my team will schedule a complimentary 30-minute strategy session with me.
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Jim Augustus Armstrong is The “Coach”
Jim Augustus Armstrong is the President of Flooring Success Systems, a program that equips dealers to double their profits, cut their work hours in half and beat the boxes! Many dealers have totally transformed their businesses and their lives for the better after joining Flooring Success Systems.
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