Are You Creating AND Tracking S.M.A.R.T. Goals?

In sales we talk a lot about goal setting, but how many of us actually track how well we are doing on those goals? I mean REALLY track it… I have been talking a lot about goal setting and coaching lately but what I realized is a lot of us set goals, but are they good goals, and moreover do we track where we are on attaining them?

I want to start out by asking the question are you setting S.M.A.R.T. goals?

S.M.A.R.T goals are:

Specific: This means you need to say exactly what it is you wish to accomplish. You want to avoid things like I want to make more money, or I want to write a book. When you think about specific goals try asking questions that answer the five W’s of writing a news article Who, What, Where, When, Why.

Measurable: There has to be some concrete metric by which it can be measured and how you will track your progress. In our previous example it would be, I want to write a 200 page book on sales and I will write two pages per day, or I want to earn 20% more income and I will do that by closing one more deal per week.

Attainable: It is important that your goals stretch you abilities and make you work a little, but you need to make sure that the goal is in fact attainable. Saying I will close 100% of my leads is not attainable. If you currently close 35%, setting a goal of 37% is probably attainable. Don’t feel bad if the goal is not huge, once you hit 37% you can always set a new one to get to 39%.

Realistic: To pass this test, the goal has to be something you actually have the desire and motivation to achieve as well as the means. Realistic does not mean easy. Frequently you will have more drive to hit goals that are difficult than you will “easy” goals because you feel challenged. The idea behind a realistic goal is make sure you truly believe it is possible to achieve this goal. This is also the stage where you will develop your plan as to how you will achieve this goal.

Timely: There has to be a deadline. Without a deadline you don’t have a goal, you have a dream. Deadlines will give you a sense of urgency and keep you focused on attaining them.

So what does a SMART goal look like? Here is an example:

I want to write a 200 page book on sales by August 1, 2008. I will achieve this by writing two pages per day every day. This goal is specific (I will write a 200 page book on sales), measurable (200 pages, two pages per day), attainable (two pages per day does not seem to bad), realistic (Not for me right now because I have other more pressing issues I am working on, but for my fictional author it seems realistic and has a pad included to give us a few days off of writing), timely (August 1, 2008 is a firm deadline).
Look at the difference between I want to write a book and I want to write a 200 page book on sales by August 1, 2008. I will achieve this by writing two pages per day every day. The second goal is much more likely to be achieved because we put a lot more thought into it, have a plan to achieve it, and a firm deadline to complete it by.

Now that we know how to set good goals, we need to talk a bit about how to track them. Personally, I use MS Outlook. One of the best features in Outlook is one almost no one uses. The task list! Play around with it for a minute and you will see it lets you name the goal, set start and end dates, track progress, and set priorities. It also lets you assign goals to other people!

The best feature is filtering. Outlook will let you look at your goals by priority, level of completes, due date, assignee, and categories. This makes it easy to keep track of 30 or 40 different goals all at once.

Writing down your goal will allow you to track progress, and also let you look back over your list of accomplishments so you can see how far you have come when you feel a bit down about not achieving you most recent goal.

In the comments… How do you set, measure and track your goals? Is there anything you are planning on doing differently now?

-Brad