- Analyze Sales from 2014: taking into consideration where sales are coming from, profitability and activities that are contributing or not contributing to results. What is the return on investment from your marketing, business and networking activities? Are you doing what is necessary to drive sales? If not, what is holding you back? Could it be very demanding customers, lack of resources, time, and discipline? Once you have determined what worked well and areas requiring improvement – take immediate action. Don’t waste any more time on activities that are not working well for your business.
- Establish Clear Sales Goals for 2015: research shows that establishing clear and measurable goals spelling out exactly what needs to be done by when result in far superior outcomes than simply trying to do your best. To that end, your sales goals must be very specific and in these terms: “From X to Y and When”. As an example, you could say something like, “I will increase sales from $1,000,000 from 2014 to $2,000,000 in 2015” by adding two government contracts.
- Decide What You Need to do: using the example above, if you chose to increase sales by adding two new government contracts, make a list of all the tasks necessary to achieve that goal. You should consider tasks like marketing, responding to RFPs, micro purchases, etc. Once you create a master list of tasks, and then determine what activities would you need to do daily, weekly and monthly to achieve your goals. You want to focus your attention on important tasks that only you can do and that are critical to achieving results. Prioritize important and critical tasks by scheduling them into your calendar and reviewing them daily. For some of the less important tasks, you may want to consider outsourcing them or assigning them to others. Your important goals
- Keep Score: create a fun way to post and announce your goals in an innovative way that you can share with your team/trusted partners. Your goals should be visible, simple to understand, and show activities required to achieve the goals. In my office, we use a variety of methods to keep score that includes a visible white board that is updated daily, and an excel spreadsheet that can easily be converted to charts/graphs. We celebrate our wins, analyze our losses and make adjustments regularly.
- Accountability: often times the major difference between those that achieve results and those that don’t is accountability. Many business owners invest in a skilled coach to help them with establishing goals, identifying key activities and crafting their scoreboards. While, I am huge fan of using businesses coaches for this purpose, it’s not absolutely necessary. What is important is creating the consistent cadence of accountability. You can do this by selecting an accountability partner (strategic alliance, co-worker, friend, and peer) and scheduling weekly accountability meetings. The purposes of the accountability sessions are to ensure that weekly action items are completed, identifying barriers to success and to adjust plans as necessary.
Last but certainly not least it is worth mentioning that in order to achieve any goals, we need to keep our mind, body and spirit strong and healthy. This is accomplished through a balanced lifestyle that includes exercise, eating right and making time for things that nurture us including spending time with family and friends.
