To achieve your sales goals, you must first create SMART goals.
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Creating goals is the first step towards achieving them. If the goals created are vague, have no deadline and seem too difficult to achieve, then the path to their achievement will be tough. It is, therefore, essential to spend time in creating goals that will make your journey to their achievement simple. SMART is a method that helps to do that.
SMART stands for:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Attainable
- Realistic
- Time-Bound
Specific
Goals must be specific. For example, ‘I want to loose weight’ is a vague goal. ‘I want to become a great businessman’ or ‘I want to become a millionaire’ are not specific because they do not say exactly what you must do to achieve them. On the other hand, ‘I will loose twenty pounds’, ‘I will explore a new market’ or ‘I will open a new branch and delegate’ are specific goals because they tell you what exactly you must aim for. Creating specific goals helps in focusing efforts in the right direction.
Measurable
Goals that can be measured allow you to evaluate your efforts, time and resources that you will spend or have spent. For instance, if you are asked to write a report, and you do not know how many words to write and in how much time, you may end up writing too much or too little. Creating measurable goals, therefore, allows you to plan your resources and control their use.
Attainable
It is important that the goals you make are attainable. You may have a big goal of ‘I want to be a millionaire’, but to get to that goal, you must create smaller goals such as ‘I want to create one more product aligned to my earlier products to increase sales’. This smaller goal and many such smaller goals will eventually make you reach your big goal of becoming a millionaire.
Realistic
You must be unrealistic and push yourself to the limits when creating big goals, but for smaller goals, you must realistically consider the resources you have, external influences such as the market, and so on. Keeping realistic goals ensures that you successfully achieve them and move closer to your bigger goals.
Time-Bound
Goals must always have a deadline. It removes procrastination and allows you to complete tasks within a specific period of time. It also ensures effective use of resources. For example, if your goal is to loose 20 pounds, then without creating a deadline for it, you will find it difficult to achieve. Therefore, your SMART goal must be ‘I will loose 20 pounds within 40 days.’ Depending upon your lifestyle and commitments, you must ensure that you create a routine to achieve the goal. ‘I will work out from 7 to 8 every morning. I will stick to my new diet for 40 days.’ When you give a specific timeline for a task, it becomes easier to accomplish. Especially for larger tasks, it is beneficial to break them into smaller tasks. These smaller tasks can use SMART goals to help their successful completion.
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