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Organization
Set SMART Goals Now to Make 2025 Your Best Year Yet
WHAT do you WANT to achieve next year? WHAT matters so much that you're ready to set a strategy to, as my father used to say, “Make it Happen”?
Goals are the foundation of success, and writing them down as clear RESULTS is key. I recommend the S-M-A-R-T process because it’s simple, actionable, and effective:
- Specific: Be clear—no vague or ambiguous goals.
- Measurable: Use numbers or percentages to track progress.
- Attainable: Ensure it’s realistic within the timeframe.
- Relevant to YOU: Choo…
End the Year Strong: Evaluate, Adjust, and Set Goals for Sales Success
Yes, we’re talking about goals again. Why? Because setting, evaluating, and adjusting goals is the foundation of achieving consistent sales success.
In many showrooms, December is quieter, with customers, clients, and designers focused on holiday preparations. It’s the perfect time to reflect, evaluate, and analyze your performance over the past year. If you didn’t make time for this in November, now is the time to do it.
Action Steps to Evaluate Your Year
1️⃣ Review Key Metrics
Take a close l…
Be Organized BY Appointment
Last month my blogs were about ‘leading by example’ as a sales manager: to demonstrate Sell it or Schedule it with a guest, to coach a sales associate from Sell it or Schedule it, and to use Sell it or Schedule it as an operating system for interactions and intentional outcomes.
The same goes for being organized - by appointment.
When one is committed to making appointments and sees the value in making them, they will organize their calendar accordingly, with slots dedicated to appointment…
What is Your Relationship to Organization?
As a natural list maker, it still surprises me when I work with someone who relies solely on a daily to-do list and doesn’t use a calendar. Is that you?
A daily to-do list is an insufficient structure for organizing actions in time. They are good vehicles for prioritizing results per day…but using them exclusively fosters high stress and a narrow perspective…which is why I encourage using a calendar with at least a weekly view. It encourages a wider vision of the time allowed and the best tim…
Organizing Actions in Time
“Time Management” is a misnomer because you cannot manage time. You can, however, manage ACTIONS in time.
Begin with your targets – what you WANT to accomplish. And working back from them, identify the actions that need to happen to achieve them. Start small and plan the actions at the best time to execute them and to achieve the result.
Plan a week at a time and support the week with a daily to-do list...but expand your perspective beyond one day…don’t rely on a daily list to manage a week …
Practice – the rewards
I need to bring the topic back around to selling.
Ah, the practice of selling. It is a practice. There are so many elements: the practice of setting goals, the practice of connecting with strangers, the practice of asking discovery questions, the practice of presenting solutions to customer priorities, the practice of handling objections, the practice of asking for a commitment, the practice of being silent and still, the practice of follow up and outreach, the practice of organizing your bus…
Who you gonna call?
Do you have your customers and prospects in a CRM or accessible and organized format?
Are your contacts stored somewhere that you can get to easily?
If you aren’t using a CRM program, you can get by with putting your contacts in Outlook or in an Excel or Google spreadsheet. You probably have systems in your computer (or the company does) that you can use to get started, so ask before you take on building something that might already be in existence.
For trade showrooms, begin to organize your…
Securing Appointments
What secures an appointment is a confirmation call and ALL in-person appointments need to be confirmed. If it's a morning appointment, ask them if a call the evening before or early that morning works better for them. If an afternoon appointment, tell them you will call them that morning (say between 9-11) to confirm the appointment.
A call works better than an email or a text because you want to TALK to them! And if you give them homework (whatever was missing when you met them such that …
Process for Selling Intangibles
Selling intangible outcomes like appointments is different from selling tangible outcomes, like sofas or chairs. Selling an intangible requires a process of introducing the concept when you first realize that it will be the intended outcome of the sales interaction. This is because it is CLEAR that the customer cannot buy today – based on the answers to your questions that were intended to determine that (not your assumptions).
At that point, introduce the concept: “Since we can only accompl…
Organized for Appointments
The Greek poet Archilochus said: “We don’t rise to the level of our expectations; we fall to the level of our training”. The same is true for our level of structure and organization.
If we are really intending to manage our actions in time and achieve our targeted outcomes by successfully making and executing appointments, we need to be structured to do that.
And that means to be organized by having appointments IN YOUR CALENDAR as one-hour placeholders, using the repeat function on yo…
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