My goal setting background comes from reading and listening to motivational speaker/writer Zig Ziglar. Since first hearing one of his seminars I have developed a lot of ideas about having sales oriented goals, as well as business and professional growth goals.
My key takeaway from Zig was that your goals must be specific and measurable. "I want to earn a six figure bonus this quarter", "Within 2 years I want to be a senior BDM", "I want to win a large MNC account which will generate $1M of revenue every year", etc, etc.
The next thing I learnt from Zig was that you need to identify all of the things that are preventing you from being able to achieve your goal right now. What skills, experience, items, etc don't you have that you need for that skill right now. Now based on this specific, measurable goal with identified broken down obstacles you need to identify milestones. If your goal was "lost 20kg in 6 months", you would break it down to 3kg a month and again 111grams per day and then focus on daily tasks and measuring your progress daily.
For a sales goal you can't break down "$100k of commission" into a daily task, so the best way to achieve it is to look at metrics. How many deals do you need to close and with how many companies? To close that many deals of that size how many prospects do you need to call on? To meet that many prospects how many cold calls, warm calls and networking calls will you need to make to achieve this goal? Then break that down into a daily and weekly basis.
If you have large scale, long term goals, e.g. Close a mega deal with XYZ Company by this time next year, breaking it down into small milestones is important but has a big dilemma - there are no rewards for any of your minor goals. You could spend a year trying to close that sale and for that whole year get no commission for all the conversations you had. So as well as long-term goals you need some short-term goals to keep you motivated along the way.
And that's why New Year's resolutions fail more often than not. They tend to be grandiose goals, with no clear objectives, no measurable metrics and nothing to motivate you along the way. Could you imagine starting a new BDM role and your boss gives you a phone, a laptop and a car and says "go win some big accounts". No training, no introduction to stakeholders, no metrics, no targets, no idea if you are doing a good job or not. (nb. I know a company that does operate this way and is reasonably successful but because of their culture only hire very specific kinds of people).
Now if you're reading this blog you're probably a sales person and making a ton of money, retiring early and having an indulgent lifestyle is probably a big part of your long-term goals. As a result you've probably heard the cliche "money doesn't buy happiness" and been told not to make "money making" a priority in your life. Now I know some incredibly successful and very well off people and they will all agree that money does not in fact buy happiness. But guess what? There's more to life than just being happy. Money can buy plenty of other things that make life worth living - comfort, luxury, excitement, adventure and experiences in general.
Now at a quarter of a century old I tend to seem very young to most of my clients and candidates. But I have a lot of mentors who are incredibly successful and the one thing I've learnt from them is that to be successful you need to know where you are going and how you are going to get there. Most 'accidental' and 'overnight' successes are born out of years of hard work. In the Art of War, Sun Tzu says "opportunities multiply as they are seized". But opportunity and chance favours the prepared. Luck favours those who are able to identify opportunity when it is presented and then chase after it.
The last thing that the most successful people in my life have told me is that it's important to enjoy the process of achieving your goals. You can in fact 'learn to love it'. Learn to love making those calls, learn to love doing those presentations, learn to enjoy haggling, bargaining and negotiating. Learn to enjoy closing. That's probably the best advice I've been given and I find that I often need to remind myself of it.
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