Sales Goals: Focus On Why Not How
Written by Dave Lorenzo on January 10, 2018 / Strategic Planning
Sales goals are important but most people focus on the wrong thing when trying to achieve them.
If you are to achieve your sales goals you should focus on WHY achieving that sales goal is important and not on HOW to achieve the sales goal.
This video explains the reasoning behind this approach:
Again, we’re into the content for the book, and I’m talking about mindset. I’m writing all about your mindset and how your mindset is influential and can have a huge impact on whether or not you achieve your goals. Today I’m really fixated on the why versus the how. You’ve got to focus on why you want to achieve something and not on how you’re going to achieve it. You got to focus on the why and not the how.
The reason?
To achieve your sales goals if you focus on the why, you’ll be fired up and you will plunge head first into whatever it is you’re trying to do. You’re going to run straight forward, you’re going to jump out of that plane, and you’re going to build your parachute on the way down. You know what? You’re going to screw up. You may screw up a little, you may screw up a lot, but you will adjust because the why is so powerful. You’re motivated.
If you focus on the how and you sit down and you get caught up in the minutiae, you get caught up in all the details involved in how you’re going to achieve something and your step by step guide or your step by step actions that you need to take, if you focus on the how you’re going to be overwhelmed and you’re going to say, “Oh my gosh. Look, there’s 15 steps to doing this and I have no idea how I’m ever going to get through all these 15 steps. I can’t see it. I just can’t see it. I’m overwhelmed.” You’re going to be reluctant to start.
The why is so important to you that you’re just going to plow forward and not worry about the how. The example I use from history is that JFK went on television and he told the nation, “We will put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. We’re going to do that so that we beat the Russians into space. We beat the Russians to the moon. We’re going to seize that strategic advantage.” More than a strategic advantage, JFK knew that it would be a boost to the morale of the country.
And we did it.
We did it as a nation. When JFK went on TV he didn’t know how they were going to do that. The scientists at NASA didn’t know how they were going to do that. But, they figured it out. If they had focused on everything that was involved, they would have told the president, “No way. Don’t promise it by the end of the decade. Give us 20 years.” But that’s not how you get things done. You focus on the why.
Here’s an example I’ll give for you that you can see in your business right now. I started out as a salesperson with Gallup, and when I was a salesperson at Gallup they would have these sales contests. The winner would get money, and it was a lot of money. I think one year it was $25,000. Another year it was 50 and another year it was $75,000. The goal was always to close an account within six months. One time the goal was to close an account within three months.
In big ticket consulting, no matter what you’re consulting on, your sales cycle is really long because you got to develop deep relationships. I was able to close a deal in three months, a deal that would normally take 18 months to two years to close.
How did I do it?
I leveraged my relationships to get to the right person. I built up trust with that right person over a very short period of time. I helped that person see that they could bet their career on me.
Why did it happen?
I wanted the money.
I wanted the $75,000.
That “why” was so important, I never thought about the how. I never thought about the 20 relationships I needed to develop and all the trust threaded have to put in me in order to invest in our services. I didn’t think about the how.
I thought about the why.
Focus on the “why,” keep yourself fixated, keep your eyes firmly on the why, don’t worry about the how, take the how as it comes, the step-by-step as they come, and you will be phenomenally successful because you’ll achieve all your sales goals.
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