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Excellence

Actions for achieving your goals

Completing ACTIONS is the only way to produce results. Period.

Your actions need to align with your strategy and your goal. Similar to your goals and strategies, you want your actions to be specific, clear, measurable. When writing actions, begin with a verb. For example:” ASK the BADAS Questions with 90% of your opportunities.”

Consider quantity (how many) and quality (when and how well) as you write these actions. You want to calendar them to DO at the time of day that will allow you to …

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HOW do I reach my goals?

Now that your goals are written, we move to creating a strategy for achievement.

This is kind of fun because you can focus on HOW you will achieve this. During your evaluation and assessment of the year, you might have noticed that you like doing some strategies more than others, or you were better at some than others, or some strategies were more effective than others.  You may have found that the market or buying habits of your customers/clients has changed and you need to adjust your appro…

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What exactly are goals?

Consider WHAT you WANT to create and achieve next year. What matters to you so much that you are going to “make it happen,” as my father used to say by setting a strategy. Those are your goals.

Goals should always be written as RESULTS. Articulation is important. I like the S-M-A-R-T process because it’s clear and simple.

               Specific                             Clear, not ambiguous or vague.
               Measurable                    It can be counted. Numbers or percentages…

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Goals Again

Yes. Goals again!

In most showrooms, December is rather quiet, with customers, clients and designers preparing for and celebrating the holidays. Prior to setting goals for the new year, December is a good month for evaluation and analysis if you didn’t do so in November. If not, see my November blogs for assistance.

Are you noticing any resistance to writing goals for next year? Do you have any sense that you don’t really need to do write goals? Perhaps you feel that you have figured out a p…

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Don’t Let Up Until You Finish

You are almost there. It’s almost over. 

Stay with the process and keep at it until you have crossed the finish line…and resist the temptation to lighten up as the end nears.

This is when others will give up…they will say ‘it’s close enough’…or that making goal is overrated…or some other disempowering belief that makes giving up seem reasonable. You might have done that in the past, too. But this is a new reality, and you are building a new set of skills that will serve you to consistently…

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Coming From Behind

Are you falling short of your goal this period? Do you have ground to make up before the period ends?

Coming from behind is a skill and a process. And it’s a skill and a process that you will use more than once, as falling short of goal is not unusual even when the intention is to make goal consistently and to stay on track. 

The process needs to be high impact…meaning it needs to produce results quickly. To do that, look to the business that is closest and easiest to close: appointments that …

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DISC – Dominant Style

If we have worked together in the past, then you know that I consider the behavioral preference model DISC as a core competence for sales professionals in every sales role: seller, sales support, manager, leader. 

This month we are going to focus on the four DISC styles in their most classic embodiment: To identify them by audio visual clues and to adapt to them so that you can create the experience THEY want… and to practice EMOTIONAL OBJECTIVITY and BEHAVIORAL FLEXIBILITY in the process. 

Do…

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Sell it or Schedule it: Train it and Coach it.

Now that you know the elements of Sell it or Schedule it, what are the skills to develop to train it or to coach your sales associates?

If you need to increase the team close ratio, what are the actions in the sales process that will accomplish that? Which steps in Sell it or Schedule it will raise their success rate? How are you going to do that?

And once you train a selling skill, how are going to coach it - formally and Informally?
How will you structure your observations on the floor to wa…

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Sell it or Schedule it: Know it and Demonstrate it.

We all nod in agreement when someone says, “You need to lead by example.”And yet, when put to the test to demonstrate the process that the salespeople are expected to execute, many sales managers would fail. So I ask you, how would you do with that?

Are you able to demonstrate 'Sell it or Schedule it' by taking a sales opportunity in the showroom and executing the process from start to finish…including getting a sale or getting an appointment?

Being able to demonstrate selling actions that pro…

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Structures and Support

“I don’t write goals, but I have them in my head.”  What??
If you’ve heard yourself say that, challenge its efficacy: DID you really achieve the goal? Did you even have one? Or is that something you say to avoid the responsibility of making a commitment and then taking the actions to achieve the goal? 

Some facts about goals: 

  1. You need to write them down. The action of thinking it through and articulating what you want is powerful and part of the process.
  2. Put your goals somewhere that yo…

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