WHAT do you want? WHY do you want it, and HOW are you going to get it? These three keys will help your millennial employees set goals in life and will at the same time make them more motivated at work. When your employees work without goals or a purpose, they won't have an internal motivation and most of them will expect to get motivated by someone or something else - something that will make them unreliable when it comes to consistent results in sales.
There are 3 key elements of what you should focus on when setting up goals.
1. What do you want?
First of all, WHAT do you want to achieve in the next 12 months? When setting goals our best advice is to set them up in different categories of your life. For example Health, Economy, Private life, Personal development. If you set goals in only one area of your life you might feel empty in other areas. For example, if you only put your focus on money and no focus on your health or relationships you might get rich, but how fun is it to be rich if it cost you your health and your relationships? Therefore, at least analyze all those areas in your life when deciding what goals to set. Maybe your relationships are great but you need to deal better with negative thoughts, then you should probably prioritize personal development for example. When you have identified WHAT you want you can start figuring out your WHY.
2. Why do you want it?
Purpose is about finding your WHY, your reasons for doing things. Why am I doing what I'm doing? Most people don't know the answer to that question. Having a strong purpose for your goals will strongly increase the chances of you succeeding with them. For example "I want 10.000 dollars!" is not a strong goal. But giving the goal a purpose like "I want 10.000 dollars, so that I can buy my mom a new car" will increase the chances of you actually getting it because you give your subconscious mind a strong reason for the actions you're about to take. This will make it easier for you to actually taking action. Which leads to your HOW.
3. How are you going to get it?
When you know your WHY you can start thinking about your HOW. How are you going to get the things you want?
First of all, you need to clearly identify what actions you need to take to reach your goals. For example "to get my dream body I need to exercise 4 times a week and change my diet". That might seem simple but that's not enough. You should also think about what habits you need to change to make this happen. Reaching goals is not just about what things you are going to start doing, it's also about the things you need to STOP doing. This can be things like stop watching Netflix, stop playing video games, quit smoking, etc.
You must be willing to give up things to gain things.
Most people have a pretty tight schedule and most of the time, taking action towards your goals acquires some sacrifices from that schedule. You must be willing to give up things to gain things. Now it is time to track your process. The best way to track a process is to create a track-sheet where you can follow up on the action steps you're about to take. I recommend creating a 30-day track sheet with boxes for each day and each goal that you can tick off. I recommend placing the tracking sheet on your fridge and adding a vision board right next to it, so that you never loose track of what you want and why.
When you have a clear vision of what you want, why you want it, and how to get it, it gets much easier for you to focus on your goals at work and it also helps you to stay motivated for a longer period of time.
When your employees work without goals or a purpose, they will lack internal motivation and most of them will expect to get motivated by they were going to get it which made them much more motivated to stick to a long term goal, which automatically resulted in better focus at work.
A goal without a plan is just a dream!
When your employees work without goals or a purpose, they will lack internal motivation and most of them will expect getting motivated by someone or something else. This makes them unreliable when it comes to sales. The reason for that is because they wake up most days feeling unmotivated, not knowing why, which will make it harder for them to deliver. This is one of the main problems when you have people in your team without life goals. They are on a constant search for outside motivation which makes them dangerous to your sales results. Their motivation is dependent on the manager or competitions or daily motivation-videos and they always need a daily dose of motivation to be able to deliver. They are also more likely to quit as soon as something else that seems fun occurs in front of them; because when they don't know what they want in life, they will constantly, unconsciously search for it. This is one of the reasons you see 20-year-olds with resumes that states 10 prior job titles. When you don't have long-term goals, consistency is not a habit, and in sales teams, consistency is what we're striving for.
When you don't have long-term goals, consistency is not a habit, and in sales teams, consistency is what we're striving for.
However, when you have a long term goal, a purpose, and a plan, the motivation comes from their fire within, making these people more reliable in delivery and they will most likely stay longer.
Therefore, if you're a sales manager, always put your focus on helping your staff to set up long term goals and give them tools to find their purpose by using these 3 goal-setting strategies.
Good luck!
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