Selling For Dummies, 4th Edition

Chapter 18

Setting Goals to Stay Focused

In This Chapter

Creating balance in the goals you set

Managing activities for goal achievement

Writing down goals to make them real

Starting all over by setting new goals

Success should be something you don’t just kinda-sorta want to reach; success, as you define it, should be something you feel you must reach. Those who achieve the most usually burn with a have-to attitude, not a want-to attitude.

If you have no concrete goals and you’ve been succeeding in spite of yourself, just think of how much more success you could enjoy if you set your sights on a definite path and have a specific time frame in which you expect to reach your destination. If you’re a newcomer to sales and you think you don’t need to set goals — think again. The sooner you map a course for success, the more likely you are to achieve what you want.

Even though you don’t need to set goals to reach some level of selling success, most professionals who fail to set goals reach a peak in their selling skills and lack either the motivation or the direction to go beyond it. ...