Almost everyone who speaks about goals talks about SMART Goals. You know:
Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Realistic
Time Bound
But is this enough?
No
Look at this SMART GOAL – “I will make $100,000 by December 31, 2022”.
Is it specific? Yes.
Is it measurable? Yes.
Is it attainable? Yes, others in my position are doing it.
Is it Realistic? Yes, others are doing it.
Is it Time Bound? Yes.
Now let me ask, how do you achieve $100,000 in revenue? In the case of a recent client, they needed to make 27 sales over the course of a year. That is a little more than 2 per month.
What does it take to do that? They haven’t done it yet so, they don’t know. But a good estimate is that they need to get 54 people to submit an application.
They then need to have 216 conversations with people in order to get 1 in 4 to submit an application.
And, if we follow that logic how many people do they need to reach out to in order to have 216 conversations? Let’s say again 1 in 4 so they would need to reach out to 864 potential clients over the course of the year. That is 864 outreach attempts to generate 27 sales.
So, the genius goal here is 864 outbound attempts per year or 4 attempts per working day.
Now that is SMART!
All too often people will create what looks like a smart goal and it is really unattainable because it has not been broken down into the next actionable steps. The one they have control over.
The next time you set a goal, take a few more minutes and back up and ask yourself what you need to do to achieve the goal (27 sales). What do you need to do to achieve that? (54 applications). And in order to reach that you would need (216 conversations). How do you attain those, you make (864 outreach attempts).
If you do not slow down to get clears on the next actionable steps your SMART goals may go the way of so many goals where people just give up.
