Beating Target

The 4 reasons you won’t beat target – part 1

Posted on March 7, 2012 by admin

The 4 things that will ensure you fail to beat a target…..

1) Not setting a target
2) Not reviewing the target regularly
3) Not deciding actions to move you towards the target
4) Negativity about the target

Part 1 – SET THE TARGET!

Where are you going? What do you want to achieve? When do you want to achieve it? Why is this important to you?

Simple questions but often hard to answer. I’ll start with the why because without that you are unlikely to have sufficient positive motivation to achieve any target.

Many people are quietly satisfied with their lot. Many people are moderately comfortable with how much they earn. Many people are comfortable with their body image. If these statements describe you then stand up now and shout that you are happy with everything – go on do it.

I’m not one of those people – its not that I’m negative about me – its just that I’m never really truly satisfied in all areas of life and I don’t think I’m alone. There always seem to be 2 areas that people want to improve – health and wealth. So if everyone wants it then why does everyone not have it? Why aren’t we all healthy and wealthy. Why is everyone on a diet? Why is nearly everyone in debt?

If you want something bad enough – if it presents too much pain not to have something – you will go and get it.

We get fat because we make bad choices about food and exercise over long periods of time. Without a target to aim for we continue along making bad choices. Its only when we reach a pain point – be it clothes not fitting or even as harsh as seeing a photo of yourself that reality bites.
Your new reality is created and it hurts and then you take action. You finally have your why – you ingrain that picture in your head and you get on a diet.

The same goes for sales or business – do you ever ask why you are trying to hit the target the company gave you? Why don’t you decide how much money you want to make and work back from there. The company’s target is all well and good and shouldn’t be ignored. But if you can relate the work you do to a positive outcome for you then you have the why question fixed. Your motivation is set and every time you review your goals you’ll gain impetus to continue doing some of the harder but essential activities that will help you reach those goals.

If you want to read more about this subject then buy the get Motivated book from Jason Gracia advertised to the right – it gives a lot more detail and helped me with all motivation aspects.

Posted in Business Development, Hitting Target, Motivation, Time Management | 4 Comments

Is it good to be lazy?

Posted on January 5, 2012 by admin

Let’s not kid ourselves – people are lazy. I’m lazy. In fact I’d go as far as to say that if I could do nothing I would. If you would pay me loads of money to sit down in front of a computer and wait for something to happen then I would. So why don’t I sit and do nothing?

Sometimes I do – in fact between Christmas and New Year I did just that for about 2 hours. I just sat and stared and did nothing. Now when I say nothing – I mean nothing physical. I wasn’t reading, I wasn’t talking, I wasn’t moving – but I wasn’t asleep either. I decided to do this – I wanted to find out how it felt and how long it would take for me to move again.

During this experience I had many thoughts. I thought about the past and the future. I thought about the people I know and the people I choose to spend time with. I thought about food – in fact the temptation to eat was really high (I’ll come back to this). I thought about work – I thought a lot about where my time was going and what I could do if I got rid of distractions. I practiced conversations in my head about sacking customers and I practiced conversations with people I’ve never spoken to. But really I did nothing.

At the end of the 2 hours nothing had happened. The world was still spinning and I was no further forwards or backwards…or so I thought.

When I got back into the office this year I had a conversation with a customer who has presented numerous challenges for me in the past but without providing much of an income stream or major potential income in the future. I asked a lot of questions – some of which I’d practiced on my lazy day. The answers I got back were predictable but in the process of this conversation I noticed a major change in attitude from the customer. So much so that I decided not to sack the customer at all because I think that I will be presented with less challenges this year – and the small amount of revenue is always worth having. But I feel in control of this situation and hence my time again. I’ve given myself the future permission to say no to a customer and use my time wisely.

With this enhanced frame of mind I set about calling all sorts of people, customers, leads anyone really. It was a great day with lots of potential business found along with really positive future activities scheduled.

So anyway back to the food thing…..

What is it about lack of physical movement that makes you crave food? Is there something inherent in our makeup that makes this happen? Is it a boredom thing – are we incapable of sitting and doing nothing? Answers on a postcard please!

Posted in Business Development, Choosing Customers, GTD & Sales, Hitting Target, Sales Questions, Time Management | 635 Comments

Gain control through measurement

Posted on December 13, 2011 by admin

Read any Business Management book and there will be a section in there dedicated to reporting and analysis. I’ve not read one yet that doesn’t say that what you measure you control.

My experience of being in sales in the UK is that you have some measurements put on you with your target or quota. But often that’s where it starts and stops. Maybe a little more visibility is required into future pipeline but that’s where it usually ends. Many American companies now extend this to put in place a sales process that their reps must adheer to. Step 1 – establish contact, Step 2 – gain rapport, Step 3 – understand issues, Step 4 – tie your shoe laces. These steps are usually enforced rigorously and ‘proven to increase sales’ – if you do them in the wrong order but get a result then it is still frowned upon. Ok so that’s fine if you have a mass product with 100s of salespeople trying to sell it across multiple territories. You must find ways to gain economies of scale with sales training and assisting people to sell your product. But if you are in a start-up or small business where the line from sales to owner of the company may only be broken by 1 or 2 levels of management – this feels like overkill.

Sales is an art form for many of us and as such these enforced sales processes are akin to painting by numbers. The joy of the act of selling can be lost and a generic result that is gained. Of course if you are looking for a generic result – then go ahead and implement and force a rigorous sales process.

However, if what you are trying to do is force increased levels of activity then you might be forcing and measuring the wrong thing.

The only real measurement of success in business is profit. If this isn’t your start point every day when you are in sales then you are going to drift. Let’s assume that you are a salesperson who wants to make money, a sales person who doesn’t require management to ask them to do their job, a sales person who doesn’t need permission to take control of their own time and go and make things happen. If you are this type of sales person then maybe you need to consider self-management and operating within your own parameters. The moment you decide to do this you will be free from trying to hit someone else’s target, free from the mundane processes and admin that some companies try to force on you and free to start and finish each day when you see fit according to your own goals.

So what do I measure?

Daily (beginning and end of each working day)

Order Profit Total this week
Forecastable pipeline to end of Financial Year
Total pipeline to end of Financial Year

Weekly

Profit last week – target profit this week
Forecastable pipeline to end of year total last week – target this week
Total pipeline to end of Financial Year last week – target this week

The weekly targets I set only bear relation to the profit targets that I want to hit. These always exceed the quota/target set down by my company and were defined by me at the beginning of the year when I decided how much money I needed to achieve the goals I decided upon for the year. I read these daily to maintain positive motivation and momentum.

So how does this work and why is this significantly different to how you might go about things? It might not be – but my experiencing of working in sales teams tells me it is.

People often say that when I’m in the office I’m in the zone or focused or aloof. When I hear comments like that I know things are going well. Every single day I have clear financial targets and I am then free to set to the tasks that I choose to reach those targets. My strategy for selling is constantly evolving but the static goal of the end figure is always there. Any emotion I may have had about clinging to an account in the hope of gaining another £10 profit disappears. Working late to impress a boss disappears. Wasting time on office politics or jockeying for position disappears. I’m never asked what I’m doing anymore – the company supports me in most decisions I make (including dropping problematic accounts or going the extra mile to win new business). If the company doesn’t support me but I’m convinced it will impact my bottom line figures then I go ahead anyway. Sometimes you have to pack a parachute as you jump out of the plane.

But the interesting thing is that I still lose deals, significant deals and small deals. I lose more deals than my colleagues. I lose deals because the product was wrong. I lose deals because I overestimated the value I was offering and overpriced and I lose deals because I’m busy working on other deals. I’m fine with that though and so is the company. Why? Because I also win lots of business. Worst case scenario is I’ll fail to hit the large target I set myself but still beat the company’s target. Last year I beat my own target and guess what? We were all happy. I did this working 38 hours a week managing to combine an active family life, taking good quality holidays and never working at the weekend. I saw my family for breakfast nearly every day and I read to my kids before they went to bed nearly every night. I do feel like I’ve got it all but I’m pushing those artificial boundaries in my head all the time. The ceiling’s we set ourselves can be so limiting – I’m sure that life is about breaking through those and contributing.

Posted in Business Development, GTD & Sales, Hitting Target, Motivation, Target Setting | 1,395 Comments

What is so good about GTD for salespeople?

Posted on December 11, 2011 by admin

If you want to make anything from scratch – you often spend a lot of time doing, creating, breaking, testing, breaking and more failing. Over time you work out a system and things get easier.

I’ve been decorating this week and painting is simple for me these days. Years of getting things wrong have helped me define better practices. But wallpapering is an art I lost touch with 20 years ago. so when I came to wallpaper one wall the amount of energy I used in planning was going to be the key. But I still got it wrong – my knife wasn’t sharp enough for wet paper and I wasted a whole roll learning this. It was a mistake that I could rectify because of the planning phase. You see I knew I would make a mistake I just didn’t know what it would be. So I allowed more time up front to do it knowing that if I’d rushed then I would only make more mistakes. I did everything slowly but accurately and I only did every activity once (apart from revisiting the DIY shop to get a new knife and re cut one length).

So how does this compare to sales and what does it have to do with GTD?

Sales isn’t a very physical activity – it mostly involves thinking, listening and communicating skills but like DIY you need to have clear goals, time to do the job, clarity around how you move forwards. You need to do it in the correct context with little to distract you. If you do get distracted you need to be able to pick things up quickly to continue towards the goal. These are all of the key concepts in GTD – they translate to most walks of life but are most effective with mental activities.

But if you think about it there are some very common themes in sales to DIY. Preparation is important but execution is key.
You need good quality tools to be efficient – try doing sales without CRM, email, a phone, basic product training etc etc.
You need the correct context to focus properly, try taking a call while cutting in two colours and driving a car while sending an email.
Have you ever read an email while talking to a customer on the phone? Was that efficient?

Concentrating on one thing at a time takes practice and discipline but I also believe you need a management structure such as GTD to enable you to do this.

But more interestingly for sales people, GTD means you think, act and do things only once. After all, I’ve never met a sales person who wanted to spend more time than is absolutely necessary at work.

We are migrating our email system right now and the techs informed me that it isn’t worth deleting any emails from before Dec this year because they’ll just reappear. I checked and it wont affect me – my inbox only has emails going back 2 days. While I was there I took 2 minutes to do my Inbox to zero action. I filed 3 emails, created 2 next actions and deleted 40 emails that I’ll never have to read again. Imagine that – email in 2 minutes a day – what will I do with the rest of my time?

Posted in GTD & Sales, Hitting Target, Sales Tools, Time Management | 4,576 Comments

One month to go to end of 2011

Posted on November 29, 2011 by admin

OK, so many financial years don’t finish in December so this won’t apply to everyone – but plenty of sales people are spending the days and nights of November and December thinking about just one thing – will I hit target?

There are only two positions that you can be in towards the end of year:-

Comfortable or Nervous

I’ve noticed a lot of nervous sales people out there towards the end of year in this down economy but what I don’t understand is how the same people are in the same position year after year. Most of us have had bad sales years in the past but many of us learn from that situation we found ourselves in and move on with added determination not to be in the same position again. So why are you nervous today? Think back to your actions in the last year and give yourself a real talking to. These are the questions you need to ask:-

Is there anything else I can do now and for the rest of the year to affect this year’s results?
Am I capable of selling?
Did I get lazy?
What were the blocks to your success and how can I remove them?
How did my peers do – can I learn from them?
Would I do anything different next year?
Do I need to get a new job to help me achieve my goals – or given another opportunity at my current company can I be successful?

You only get one life – so don’t waste it doing something you don’t enjoy or get satisfaction from. If you need to make a change then make it. Good luck.

I’m not one of the nervous one’s right now – my hard yards were put in consistently over 4 years of developing new business in a down economy. My End of year isn’t until July but I’m well on track to beat target by April. Do youself a favour and aim high with your activity right now. You might be surprised at how much you can achieve in a small amount of time.

I’ve seen relatively unsuccessful salespeople change jobs and thrive in their new surroundings. I’ve also seen people change jobs chasing more money and failing miserably. Think long and hard before deciding what to do- sometimes time is the factor you need to be successful in sales. Take a look at the people beating target in your company – did they turn up yesterday or have they been around a while?

You can bitch all you like about they’ve got the best accounts or they’ve got the best patch or they get all the leads. If you want to be like them you’ve got to make it happen – it won’t happen by talking – you’ve got to walk the walk consistently for a good period of time. Success only comes with action, new customer wins, creative business development – but you have to decide to do it and go and take what is rightfully yours. Everyone who works for it will be rewarded in the end.

Posted in Business Development, Getting Started in Sales, Hitting Target, Missing Target, Sales Questions | 968 Comments

Telesales Tips – Getting started on the phone – Part 3

Posted on November 18, 2011 by admin

Today I’m going to cover one of the most important areas behind being successful with using the phone to find business – keeping going!

Anyone can start – but many give up. Here are some of the typical reasons given

failed calls
successful calls (one good call can give you an excuse that you don’t need to call someone else)
rejection
lack of success
the toilet needs cleaning
my expenses need doing
no-one else is calling
no-one is there anyway on Fridays, Mondays etc etc etc
product isn’t selling well
someone was really nasty to me
my environment isn’t perfect
my phone is dirty
I’ve run out of people to call

If you haven’t thought these thoughts then you’ve never done telesales. The key to keeping going is to dismiss them as excuses, urban myths, crutches to support inaction. Humans are emotional beings of course but some things if you want to do them well have to be completed without emotion and I’ll put telesales in that category.

If you take emotion out of the equation then the excuses above become irrelevant. If you have something of value to offer people and you can describe that value and find people who would benefit from it by talking to them – then telesales will work. Let’s try one of the excuses above and apply real logic.

No-one is there on Mondays or Fridays. In the uk there are millions of workers in 100s of 1000s of organisations. Can you really tell me that everyone does a 3 day week? Normal working hours in the UK is 9 to 5.30 – I can guarantee that other people will be around every single working day you choose to try and find them. You might have to make 10% more calls to reach the number of people you want to but if you are capable of picking up the phone about 100 times in a day then 10 more pickups won’t kill you.

Rejection. I found someone and offered them our product or a way to consider it and they rejected me! The reality is that they rejected your advance, your pitch, your product. They haven’t rejected you – get over it you aren’t that important to them. Chances are you got them at the wrong time of day and if you tried exactly the same pitch in 2 weeks time you’ll get a different response – does that make you better person? Yipee they didn’t reject ‘me’ this time.

I’ve run out of people to call. My personal favourite….if what you offer is so limited as to only be relevant to the 10 people you spoke to yesterday – then close down – go get another job because yours isn’t a business worth running. If you struggle to find contacts then take action to do something daily to find good contacts. I use Jigsaw and if you click the “Free Business Contacts” banner to the right it will let you sign up and find as many contacts as you could ever wish to try and contact. Its free and will give you a headstart. Alternatively, on your drive home tonight, go a different way and write down as many company names in your town as you can with a street name. Google them, write down their details and phone them tomorrow. If you sell toilet seats then phone reception and ask who normally buys toilet seats – get their details and get put through. You will never run out of contacts – just the energy, drive and get up and go to keep finding them.

Take another look at your actions in or around the time you schedule for telesales. If you find yourself making an excuse for not picking up the phone – then have a word with yourself – laugh at the emotional being that took over – then get back to it.

Posted in Getting Started in Sales, Hitting Target, Telesales, Time Management | 1,317 Comments

Telesales Tips – getting started on the phone – PART TWO

Posted on November 9, 2011 by admin

PART TWO – What do you say on the phone that creates resistance?

How many of you have been called by a salesperson in the last month? How often do you give a stock answer similar to:-

We are sorted for that thanks?
I don’t have time.
Yes, send me the information!
Go away, I hate salespeople calling me!

This week I’m going to concentrate on some ideas that I’ve used to prevent these scripted responses from the people I call. For the basis of the post I’m going to keep it really simple – you sell computer stuff to businesses.

So let’s presume you’ve made enough calls to finally reach someone worthwhile talking to. You’ve find the person who is responsible for owning and operating the computer stuff. There’s a bunch of things you could say when you call – the dictionary has millions of words you could use. The key to getting someone’s attention is to get to a conversation as quickly as possible -that means getting them to speak but when they speak if you hear one of the stock answers from above then you’ve probably failed.

Which of these openings is most likely to lead them to the assumption that you are a salesperson and to try and get rid of you?

Hi John, this isn’t a sales call I just wanted to talk to you for a few minutes about computers?
Hi John, how are you today?
Hi John, do you have 5 minutes to answer a questionnaire about computers?

To me, each of these indicates the person calling me wants to sell me something and I automatically respond with a stock answer to get rid of them. However every now and then I get a call that I do take – even when people knock on my door – there are good ways and bad ways of doing it.

Would any of these openings illicit a standard response?

John, this is Jack over at Computer Stuff Company. I was discussing computer stuff with Dave in your team and we thought that getting new computer stuff might help with the general speed issues that users have been experiencing – but then he told me that you might need some persuading on that. So I’ve just called to find out your angle on things?
John, we’ve got a bunch of your competitors in a room next month discussing clever ways for how to make more out of dwindling budgets. We were hoping for your input – what are you doing on the 20th? After that we were hoping to get a chance to delve deeper into some specific cost savings that we could help you with over the coming 3 years with our xyz technology. I’m reliably informed that you’ve not bought from us before and we want to change that .

Some things I’ve picked up over the years is – be yourself, try to speak ‘normally’ and not with a sales voice, be honest about your call. If its a sales call then don’t claim it isn’t!

I can’t remember the last time I had a conversation that ended with someone saying ‘just send me the information’ – but the next time I do I will smile broadly and share the joke with the person who tells me.

Posted in Getting Started in Sales, Hitting Target, Telesales | 819 Comments

Telesales tips – getting started on the phone? – PART ONE

Posted on November 4, 2011 by admin

At some point if you are in sales or run your own business you are likely going to have to find new customers. There are lots of ways of doing this and I’m not advocating one over another. However, often I hear people say that ‘Cold-Calling’ doesn’t work. This is often due to a bad experience they’ve had trying to do it well or poor results from an outside agency. If you’ve had bad results doing something maybe its down to your approach rather than the activity itself? So in the first of a series of posts, I’m going to cover how I approach things – what I’ve found works and what doesn’t. I hasten to add that I don’t have any secret sauce or magic wands. Like many things, becoming and remaining good at something often requires trial and error and lots of practice. But I have one secret for you that I urge you to take away? The majority of salespeople and entrepreneurs I know don’t cold call. They don’t pick up the phone and they don’t give it a sustained go – and they definitely aren’t successful with it.

Firstly if it helps you any – then lets stop calling it cold calling. Its a horrible phrase that conjures up visions of cold and wet sales people knocking on your door promising you that they aren’t selling anything. It also gives you a crutch to those age old views that it just doesn’t work. So let go of the phrase if it helps! Cold Calling isn’t easy and anything you can do to remove the barriers to starting and continuing with a calling regime will help you.

There are loads of things I could cover but on this first post I’m going to start with a subject that underpins my efforts and activities:-

1) Numbers Game

I estimate that a full time caller will have the ability to talk to about 100 people a week. To do that you need a list of people to call much larger than 100 every single week. 75% of calls I attempt result in voicemail, no answer or access blocked by gatekeeper. So on average if I want to do fulltime calling I’ll need to create a database of about 400 people for every week I want to be active.

But here is where I win because I know what my numbers are – do you know or is it just a feeling based on previous failures or successes?

It is nigh on impossible for me to stop calling at any point because I believe that no-one is there today. I know that on average that if I pick up the phone and dial 100 numbers that I will get to speak to 25 people that I’m trying to reach (not gatekeepers). So what if I start on a dreary Monday morning with 30 dead calls – it just means that I know I will have a better average of pickups just around the corner. If you don’t believe me then start recording your numbers and avg them out. You will see changes over time of course – I’ve noticed a marked increase in voicemails – but its not enough to stop me calling because the results keep coming.

Now for every 25 people that I get to speak to my avg numbers tell me that I will find 10 opportunities for future business in the coming year. Out of those 10 I will find 2 opportunitities that could give me business within 3-6 months.

This is the biggest reason I still do cold calling – its a repeatable process that guarantees me opportunities. I can’t think of a single other activity I do that guarantees it. Yes my best leads come from referalls but I’m not able to guarantee a flow. I also network and I work with outside agencies – but in the end I always come back to calling becuase the numbers tell me to.

So how do I record my numbers? I use a tick sheet and use a simple system to record my activity and results from that activity. It adds a nano second of effort and the results are that I never have to rely on gut instinct or outside pressures or external events to find that absolute right time to do my calling. If you want a copy of it then get in touch -I’d be happy to share it with you.

If you do enough of it then you’ll find massive increase’s in your results – so much so that you might not find enough time to keep doing cold calling every day – but I guess it just depends how much you want success doesn’t it?

Posted in Business Development, Getting Started in Sales, Hitting Target, Telesales | 1,305 Comments

End of Month Actions – can you do it all?

Posted on October 28, 2011 by admin

The last day of October is coming – its always an important day – you’ve usually got plenty of orders that just need closing but you also need to start forecasting November and December – or in my case through to end of January.

My dilemma is that I’ve done all I can to close down the orders already. My heart is tugging me to continue down that path on Monday but my head says forget about it and go about your business as normal. Pipeline is key – work the deals that need working.

Its hard though because the pressure is always on at the end of the month – even if it isn’t quarter end – someone else inevitably wants to set your agenda for you. So what to do?

One of the things that I’ve got from studying GTD has taught me is that it is possible to both – all the time. Its just a matter of deciding on the next action for each deal I’m working. At the moment I have 40 live deals and about 4 of them could close on Monday. The actions for those 4 will take me about 1 hour max – so I’m going to do those and then continue on with everything else including opening new doors and finding new opportunities. If I need to I can park anything that comes towards me and make decisions when I have time to do so – but I’ll only expend energy once on each decision. All I want to know is what is my desired outcome for the deal and what is the most obvious, logical, positive step that I can take to take the deal towards its conclusion. If that step takes 2 minutes or less then I do it then and there – if it may take longer then I record what the action is very specifically and put it into my action list in a context that I can complete it.

Call John at ABC Bank on his mobile to verify current security infrastructure is about as specific as I get. As its a call then I place that into my context list of @calls. I don’t assign it a priority and I don’t schedule it. I just trust my action system that when I have a block of time to make some calls that I can go to the list and get to it straight away. My calls list often has over 50 next actions in it – a glance at the list gives me all the info I need to decide at that point which action to do first. I get time to make calls every single day and this one element of GTD has increased my sales productivity massively.

Quote John at ABC Bank – now this is an item that I need to deal with that has multiple actions - rather than getting bogged down in each action I apply the next action process which is often related to getting more information. So my only action for this is really Email supplier to request quote for xyc kit. This is a 2 minute action so I do it straight away and then file that action in @waitingfor list. I relate the action to the deal (or in GTD terms the project) and then move on until I get the info I need to complete the quote. I check the @waitingfor list everyday and rarely find that people don’t get back to me. I’m usually pretty thorough about my requests. I tell them in detail what I want, when I want it and give them the most ideal option for contacting me in case they get stuck or need to clarify – its usually best to assume that 50% of the time people won’t understand your request first time – so I prepare for that in my requests.

If in doubt I also then do a weekly review to include a review of each project or deal on my books. If one has stalled or if I’ve not got to it, I renegotiate the terms of the project with myself. What do I really want to achieve with the project and how will I start? If I can’t start because someone hasn’t got back to me then my action is clear – I need to chase that information by calling or emailing someone for an update.

All this is logical stuff that we all do naturally anyway. GTD helps put those natural actions into a repeatable and efficient system that allows you the time to do things how you want to do them. Since I’ve implemented GTD my productivity has gone through the roof – people tell me I’m as organised a person as they’ve ever met and my results and outstanding compared to before. I’ve always been relatively successful in my sales career but now GTD has helped me get organised as well. I work less hours than ever before and make more money.

There is plenty of time in the day to do it all – if you choose to. Know what you want to achieve and go get it done – piece by little piece. If you make any mistakes then adjust as you go – but just keep going. I guarantee that come the end of next month/quarter/year you will have so much going on you’ll have no concerns about hitting target – you’ll be more concerned about finding enough time to spend the commission.

Just buy the book – listed to your right by David Allen – he’ll explain it much better than I can!

Posted in Business Development, Getting Started in Sales, GTD & Sales, Hitting Target, Time Management | 903 Comments

Maintaining Motivation in the Longterm

Posted on October 21, 2011 by admin

Positive Motivation isn’t something that always comes easily to everyone – but it can be even harder to keep positively motivated. You can slip away for many reasons but I believe that it comes down to 2 main areas. Either you stop believing that you will reach your goals or you can become unmotivated if you do reach your goals.

I’ve learnt a lot of my Motivation techniques in the book by Jason Gracia that you can see to the right of this post and I urge you to consider reading his information yourself. It was one of the major factors that helped change my life in a positive way.

I think the key to maintaining positive motivation is in the goal setting – or dream setting. Identifying things that are real to you that will make a real difference to your life that you can then use to drive your day to day actions. I’ll give you an example. One of my goals last year was to get Olympics tickets for London 2012. Any of you who have applied will know that it wasn’t going to be easy and to be sure of doing it you had to gamble on buying the most expensive tickets. One of my barriers to this was finding the money to buy the tickets without compromising other commitments. This was an abnormal expenditure but as a commission based salesperson I was able to visualise the actions that I could attempt to reach the money goal. In short I needed to sell more and quickly as the deadline for purchase was approaching.

Once I’d reached the goal I noticed that my day to day activities dropped slightly. It was a odd feeling. I’d earned the right to slow down a little, sit back and reap the rewards. How weird us human beings are

However, while I was considering this goal I realised that what I really wanted was to enjoy an ongoing level of excitement in my life – I also wanted to be able to share that excitement with my family. Getting Olympics tickets was clearly going to help with that aim – its a once in a lifetime opportunity to see the greatest show on earth with unparalleled levels of optimism and good will. Don’t get me wrong – I’m still excited about next Summer and I have a level of pride in looking back at how hard I worked to achieve the aim – but its no longer a motivating factor in my day to day life.

I still have the core goal in mind and I’ve been very busy in the past few months working towards some new goals – yes more excitement – the family ski holiday is booked and paid for and I’m now looking forward to some great new things next year. My 7 year old wants to go and visit a Volcano, and my enjoyment of life is wrapped up in my family’s enjoyment so I’m going to try and make it happen. It sounds exciting and fascinating and maybe something that I would have wanted to do in the past but never considered it possible. We really don’t have any Volcanoes in the South of England – so the planning starts here and I already know that its going to take some serious cash to make it happen (without impacting the other commitments we already have of course). I know its going to cost me about £3000 so in reality, due to tax, I’m going to have to earn £6,000 more to make this happen. I’ve given myself a target of 12 months to achieve that one – but if it can be achieved sooner then we can start turning some of our other dreams into reality and plan our next exciting adventure. Its a big world and we hope to see an awful lot of it.

What is really motivating you to continue to do some of the harder things in life?

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