I’ve got good news and bad news for you.
The bad news?
You’re probably suffering from at least one of three guaranteed success killers – procrastination, perfectionism, and lack of focus – and don’t even realize it.
Success Tips
How To Achieve Your Small Business Goals for 2011
Planning the Achievement of Your Goals
by
Tom Hopkins
Goal setting and time planning go hand in hand. I don’t believe you can effectively plan your time without goals. And, I don’t believe you’ll ever achieve your goals without effectively planning your time.
Since numbers are easier to work with than ideas, I’m going to demonstrate how time planning and goal setting work together to help you achieve your financial goals. The same system can be applied to any other goal you can measure with numbers, but this is the easiest way to demonstrate it.
First of all, determine what your financial goal is going to be. If you want to earn $60,000 next year, you’ll need to know exactly what you have to do to get there. This can be done with a simple graph shown below.
Year Month Week Day
Financial Goal $60,000 $5,000 $1,200 $249
# of Sales 120 10 2.4 .5
# of Presentations 360 30 7.2 1.5
# of Contacts 1,800 150 36 7.5
In order to make $60,000, you’ll need to be on track with earning $5,000 each month. Assuming you take a two-week vacation, that breaks down to earning $1,200 per week. Earning that $1,200 each of the 50 weeks of the year will let you truly relax and enjoy your two-week vacation.
To see how that breaks down to what you must earn each day, let’s take 365 (days in a year) and subtract weekends. In our example, I’m assuming you work 5 days per week. That leaves 261 days per year for you to work. However, that’s not true in that you are likely to celebrate various holidays and, don’t forget your two-week vacation. So, let’s take away 10 holidays and 10 vacation days. So, now you have 241 days per year that you are out there face-to-face with potential clients. Dividing 241 into $60,000 shows us that you must earn $249 each day you work. Now, if you take longer vacations or personal days or sick time, you’ll have to rework your figures here to stay on track.
You know how much income you generate from each sale on average. Divide that amount into your $60,000 goal, then across the month, week and day columns. This shows you how many sales you need to make each day to earn that $60,000.
For example, if you earn $500 per sale, you would need to make 120 sales per year, which averages 10 sales per month, 2.4 sales per week or about half a sale per day. So, if you didn’t close a sale yesterday, you’d have to close one today to stay on track.
Next, we consider your closing ratio. Your closing ratio is determined by how many people you must present your product or service to before you get a closed sale. If you close one out of every 3 people, then your ratio is 1-to-3. So, if you must make 3 presentations to get one sale, how many do you need to reach your 120 annual sales goal? 360 presentations.
If it takes 5 contacts to make 1 presentation, you’ll need to contact 1,800 people this year to achieve your goal. That boils down to just about 7.5 people per day.
Now, as you plan your time to accommodate your goals, is it feasible for you to make 7.4 new contacts each working day? If it’s not, you have two choices: 1) you can lower your income goal, which doesn’t sound like much fun, or 2) you can improve your skills so your ratios are better and you don’t have to meet as many people to make the number of sales you desire.
Knowing what you must do each day to achieve your larger annual income goal helps you direct your time to what will really matter most.
This same system can be applied to saving or investing your financial resources for retirement; a special family vacation; or any goal that can be broken down mathematically. Once you get a handle on this system, you’ll find you can even apply it to your exercise routine and other aspects of your physical health. If the small steps are well taken, the journey will reach a successful end—the achievement of your goals.
Goal setting and time planning go hand in hand. I don’t believe you can effectively plan your time without goals. And, I don’t believe you’ll ever achieve your goals without effectively planning your time.
Since numbers are easier to work with than ideas, I’m going to demonstrate how time planning and goal setting work together to help you achieve your financial goals. Read More »
How Remaining Positive In A Crisis Can Lead You To Small Business Success
“Hopes and Alibis”
A couple of weeks back, the top 20 world nations, economically-speaking, met to sort out the problems that are still affecting the world’s top economies in the wake of what we are told has been the worst financial crisis for 50 years. Just a few weeks on, few of us are likely to remember what the meeting agreed, decided, or achieved.
Not so long ago, we heard about two other responses to the financial crisis at a more mundane but more connectable level.
The first was the news of an early morning attack on the home of former Royal Bank of Scotland boss, Sir Fred Goodwin, in which missiles were thrown at his house and Mercedes car.
The other piece of news was the result of a survey into the business crisis by the UK Chartered Management Institute.
In the survey, 1118 senior managers were asked how they were responding to the downturn. To the surprise of many, a majority of respondents said they were refusing to let the gloomy news dampen their enthusiasm. Unlike the recession of the 1990’s, in which most businesses reacted by cutting costs, today’s business leaders said they remained positive.
And they are doing this by concentrating on two particular areas.
The first is an increase in training for their core staff. The second is a focus on the twin skills of management and leadership to see them through.
In a choice of attacking bankers or investing in the people in your business, it’s not hard to see which route makes most sense.
For just as uncertainty, fear and a lack of self-belief led us into this situation, so positivity, confidence, and self-belief will lead us out.
I hope at future world summits, the world leaders will follow the lead of those UK managers who are enthusiastically investing in their people.
I hope too that they will pause to remember the words of the greatest business enthusiast the world has ever seen, car maker Henry Ford, who said: “You can do anything if you have enthusiasm. It is the yeast that makes our hopes rise to the stars. With it, there is accomplishment. Without it, there are only alibis.”
A couple of weeks back, the top 20 world nations, economically-speaking, met to sort out the problems that are still affecting the world’s top economies in the wake of what we are told has been the worst financial crisis for 50 years.
Just a few weeks on, few of us are likely to remember what the meeting agreed, decided, or achieved.
Change Your Mindset, Grow Your Business
I just got back from Fabienne Fredrickson’s Mindset Retreat in Miami. I actually never planned on going but after interviewing her for my Wise Women of The Web teleseminar series, her ideas intrigued me so I hopped on the plane.
What a week! Fabienne devoted 3 days to ‘transforming’ the participants lives. She covered a whole array of mindset issues-from the importance of thinking big and understanding your Big Why to how to get rid of the ‘gunk’ that is preventing you from being the full success you want to be. Read More »
Think Big – Small Business Success Mindset
Have you ever wondered why some people make it and some people don’t? What is the magic ingredient for small business success?
While there are many explanations, one thing that Fabienne Fredrickson kept repeating during her 3 –day Mindset Retreat is that the vast majority of us do not think BIG enough.. Our dreams TOO SMALL. We impose limits on our ambitions and goals.
And if you don’t dare to reach for the stars, it goes without saying that you will never touch them. Read More »
The Rules of Negotiation Are Like Squash…
Although each set of business negotiations is unique, there are a number of themes that are common to all kinds of negotiation. One of these is that negotiations are like a game.
For example, to engage in negotiations requires at least two players. There are set rules and ritual moves and maneuevers. At any one time, one side or another may be in the lead. And, like a game, people come away having won or lost even if they are ready to engage again the next time round. Here are 10 rules of negotiation based on a coaching handbook for squash. Read More »
Two Words That You Should Never Use…
If you don’t know what you’re talking about you can get into terrible trouble, because if what is said is not what is meant you end up doing the wrong thing.
One great curse in this respect is jargon. All professions and industries have special jargon to confuse and impress outsiders whilst giving insiders a comforting feeling that they belong to some special group and are doing something important.
At the same time it confers an air of mystery to proceedings, enabling those in the know to charge more money for doing what are usually quite routine and simple tasks. Read More »
Keep TABs On Your Success
It happens to all of us from time to time. We find ourselves falling short. Something’s off. We aren’t making as much progress as we think we should—and as we used to do.
New strategies and tactics that were promised to work simply don’t. Sometimes we chase off after bright and shiny objects (BSO Syndrome).
And all too often we forget about the things that served us so well. Read More »
The Road(s) to Success
I attended an evening business event last week, primarily because one of the featured speakers was my friend and fellow consultant, Steve. (Not his real name. His real name is Nick Miller, but I’m calling him Steve to protect his anonymity.)
Anyway, I went to see “Steve,” and as always, he was impressive. I’ve seen him speak several times over the last few years, and every time I do, I walk out of the room newly energized and eager to jump back into my own work. Read More »
I’ve Heard of You…
Let me tell you the four, actually five words that are music to my marketing ears.
This past week, I’ve been on the phone, reaching out to some top marketers about potential partnerships, some of the most successful people on the Internet and almost every one I’ve emailed and called has had the same thing to say. Read More »
