You can’t sell your goals but you can sell your vision. So don’t just have goals have a vision, which drives these goals.Then you become a visionary. Replace ‘should do’ with ‘will do’ or even better ‘must do’. A goal is something you are somehow obliged to do and push for. They are stepping stones. A vision will pull you. Your vision is your engine.

Imagine your future vision of yourself and your family. Where are you, what are you doing, what do you have? Imagine that you are looking at a picture with you in it. Then step into the picture as if you are looking through your own eyes. Associate with the feeling and let them flood in. I go into a lot of detail on goal setting in my book Done: How to Achieve Your Goals and Make Your Dreams Come True.

Your vision should include the goals of you becoming the sales professional who will generate the income you desire. According to Jordan Belfort (The Wolf of Wall Street), his sales professional will be:

• Sharp as a tack
• Enthusiastic as hell
• An authority

Here is some more from Mr Belfort, there will be much more later.
For your customer to buy, they need to:

• Love your product or service
• Trust you
• Trust your company

1. Love your product or service.

To make them love your product or service you need to establish a case for them to buy now. You do this by establishing an airtight logical case and an airtight emotional case. You can build the emotional case by future pacing. This is an NLP term to describe a process where the customer imagines how they will feel when they own the product or service.

2. Get them to trust you with Body Language

Apart from your tonality, you can also use your body language to get someone to trust you. You do this by managing your space and time. As a caveat to this though, you need to be a trustworthy person. No amount of body language training will help you if you are not trustworthy.

When selling to women, always stand directly in front of them face to face and about 0.75 metre away (2.5 feet). Standing side on with women will appear shifty.

Conversely when selling to men you don’t want to stand in front face to face as this would be confrontational. Here you want to stand at an angle.
A word on accessories, for the man. One plain wedding ring is a maximum amount of jewellery. Definitely no pinkie ring. Leave this for Prince Charles. Tasteful cufflinks are fine, and a nice tasteful watch, can demonstrate success without being ostentatious.

Facial hair in a no-no. Sorry but the moustache, goatee and beard need to go. They make you come across as untrustworthy. I’m sorry don’t shoot the messenger. Shave them off. Your sales figures will thank you.
Hand Shakes should be neutral ie not too soft not too vice like; think of holding a bottle of wine and that wold be the grip you need. The hands should be waist high.

Dress – Wrapping the package.

Always dress your best not just to impress but for how it will make you feel inside. You don’t need to go overboard on expensive cloths. Understated quality is what to aim for. It goes without saying that clothes should be spotlessly clean and maintained. Let’s face it you could give your best killer presentation ever, but if you have a soup stain on you tie, kiss the sale goodbye.

If you have a meeting to close a sale, there is evidence that a sharp dark blue (or black) suite, a solid coloured (not patterns, checks or stripes) white shirt and a pink/red tie will get you markedly better results. This is all down to the colours of influence. Just look at any major politician and they all wear this uniform.

Eye Contact

;You should aim to be looking at the prospect in the eyes for approximately 70% of the time, preferably more. It’s fine to glance away from time to time, as if you are collecting your thoughts, whilst speaking, but when you are listening to them, keep your eyes on theirs. If you are meeting in a public place like a hotel lobby, get there early so you can find a spot away from windows, TVs or any other things that can distract you or the prospect. Your prospect needs to know they can trust you and so good eye contact is a must.

Matching and mirroring.

These are techniques from NLP. They can subconsciously influence the prospect. The principle here is that people like people who are like themselves, so by matching and mirroring you can make them feel you are like them. Mirroring is when you mirror what they do. If they touch their face with their left hand you touch your own with your right hand. Ie you are like a mirror image of them. Matching creates the same sense of rapport but is more subtle. If they touch their face with their left hand you touch yours with your left hand. Be very subtle with this as you can make them very uncomfortable if you get it wrong. It would be much easier and safer to create an air of genuine rapport t with them and you will both naturally mirror and match.

3. Trust Your Company

This is perhaps the only part you are not fully in control of, however that said you can influence if and how the customer trusts your company. Firstly never over promise what your company can deliver, this is a sure way to lose trust in your company. The saying under-promise and over-deliver is a cliche but it is true. When you are in the throes of a sale, its really tempting to tell the customer that your company can meet some deadline or quality standard which they obviously can’t. It’s much better to say no now.

Other ways in which you can create trust in your company are references. Can you ask your current customers for a testimonial or would they allow a prospect to visit them? There are many other ways to build trust in your company, such as factory visits, or you could take along a trusted Technician with you to the prospect call.

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Now we are starting to get more specific. You are now going to attempt to translate your vision into long term goals. Later on I will show you how to write a properly worded goal, which will ensure you achieve it.
These goals will take more than a year to achieve. Think about what you want to achieve in the next five years.
The goals could be facilitating goals, which are like building blocks, for you to reach your vision. For instance, your vision may be to retire early. It may be to travel the world, having sold your successful business for a packet. A good long-term goal would be therefore to sell your own successful business in 5 to 10 years’ time. To be even more specific you could say for £20 million.

Balance

As I suggested before, this method will ensure you have balance in your life. This is why I suggest that you have at least one goal in each life area. I will talk more about the life areas later on in this chapter.
Again, print off your mission and long term goals and put them in a section of your Success Manual called Mission and Long Term Goals.
If you would like a ready made template for your Mission and Long Term Goals, email me and I will send you one out. My email address is at the end of the book.

Annual Goals

Next, we are going to break down your long-term goals into annual goals. Ideally, you would perform this exercise at the year-end, so that you have a full year ahead. If not I would give yourself at least six months.
If it is July or later for you now, draft your annual goals for completion by the end of the following year. For example if its July 2018, then your annual goals will be for completion by the end of 2019. You will be doing this exercise at the end of every year from now, so you will soon get into sync.
On your annual goals list, you will also add any other things you want to achieve, by the end of the year. These goals might not be linked to long-term goals, but they are still things you want to achieve in a year.
Again, if you would like a ready made template for your Annual Goals, contact  me and I will send you one out.

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Vision

It all starts with Vision. Victor Frankl, in his book Man’s Search For Meaning advises us not to ask what the meaning of life is, but what is the meaning of our lives. What is your purpose?
I struggled with this for a long time, trying to uncover what my purpose was in life. If you, like me, weren’t lucky to be born with a purpose, then I can reassure you. If attempt to define it, then it will evolve over time.
Think of defining your purpose like playing a hole in golf. You wouldn’t expect to hit a hole in one on a par 5, although it could be possible. No, first you would aim in the general direction of the green and as time goes on refining your focus.
So you have to start somewhere and here are a two simple exercises for you to attempt to define your purpose, or at least go in the general direction.

The Eulogy

So first you need to spend some time thinking about what you want your life to look like. Imagine you are at a memorial service of someone special. You are sat the back of the church. The church is packed out. Clearly this was an important person, someone who was well thought of and loved. It was clearly someone who lived a good long life and touched many other people’s lives positively. Then you realise that it is your memorial service. Get a pen and paper and write yourself three eulogies.

1. Write the first eulogy, as if it were written by a family member. Write out the words they will use to describe you and your achievements. How you loved, cared for and provided for them.
2. Next, write your eulogy as spoken by a good friend. As above, what would you want that person to say about you? What did they admire about you and your personal achievements.
3. Finally write a piece from a business associate, describing your achievements in business or your career. How did you treat the people you dealt with? What is the legacy you have left behind. How will people continue to be positively effected by you after you are gone?

Your ideal day

In this exercise , you will now describe your ideal day from getting up in the morning, until going to bed at night. This day will not be a holiday or lazy weekend, but perhaps a working day, during the week.

1. What will your morning routine be? Where are you? Describe your house? What will you wear, who is there?
2. Next walk through your workday, including your ideal working environment. Do you know what you will be doing?
3. Then your evening; again what will you do and with whom? Finally your bedtime routine.

Is there anything else you want? In all likelihood, your vision for the future will be quite abstract. You will have a vague feeling about what you want it to be. This is completely fine, as you can start to get more specific later.
It is also good to start to put together a dream board or scrap book of cuttings from magazines. Although you might not quite be able to describe your vision in words adequately, pictures can convey a sense of it in a more complete way.
This need not be a one off exercise. It should be something that evolves over time. You might spend some time once a month, playing with your long term vision.
Print off both your Eulogies and Ideal Day scripts and put them in a section of your manual entitled Vision.

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Goal Setting Templates

You don’t need to rush this goal setting process. It is not something you do once and leave. It will form a living, document that will evolve over the weeks, months and years.

Remember it is in the process not just the results that you will gain happiness and satisfaction.

I have templates for all the documents that will make up your success manual. If you would like a free copy, then just contact me. Here is a summary of the process of making your life’s purpose into concrete action steps.

1. Vision:

First spend time writing out your vision; give yourself a good few hours uninterrupted to do this. You can use the exercises in the Goal Setting section.

2. Long Term Goals and Mission:

Next start to word out your long-term goals and mission. Make sure you have at least one goal in each life area to give you balance.

3. Annual Goals:

Once you’ve done that then put your annual goals together. These goals will be made up of stepping-stones to your long-term goals, annual targets and other things you want to achieve this year.

4. Annual Review:

Put in your diary or planner, for New Year’s Eve or near to it, to repeat the process 1-3 above.

5. Monthly Goals:

Set your monthly goals, using the COMBINED formula. Make sure you have a minimum, target and stretch for each. There will be only one goal in each life area.

6. Monthly Review:

Put in your planner or diary on first day of each month, an appointment with yourself, entitled Monthly Review. This appointment is to be sacrosanct, not to be missed.

7. Projects List:

This list is for all the things you want to complete, which will take more than one action to perform.. Why do you want to complete this project? If you can’t answer this satisfactorily, then don’t add it to the list.

If you think of something related to your goals, you can add them to this list until you are ready to put them on your Monthly COMBINED list. This way you can keep track of supporting projects and sub goals.
You can also use it to add all those niggly jobs that build up.

8.Weekly Goals:

Next, fill out your Weekly goals list. There may be more than one per area and some areas might not have any goals this week. You should also put any weekly targets in here as well.
Weekly Review: Again, another critical appointment with yourself entitled Weekly Review. Do your weekly review at the same time every week, for instance every Friday afternoon. (See later).

9. Single Actions List:

This is a list of all those odds and sods that crop up. Single actions are simple tasks that are not related to a goal or project. These are usually those maintenance type of tasks.
They could be things like errands or repairs, or they might be things that ensure the smooth running of life. They are also not reoccurring tasks. Check out the sections coming up for how I recommend you tackle these types of tasks.

10. Daily Review and Daily Action List:

Here is another appointment you should set with yourself, but this time you will do it every day. Some people recommend setting this in the morning, some people recommend in the evening.

The key thing is that you make it a habit to do this every day, so pick a time that will allow you to keep this habit, without distraction. See later for more on the Daily Review.

On your daily review, you will write out your daily actions for the following day (or later that day if you choose the morning). This list is what you are committed to doing on that particular day.

This is not a to-do list. Whatever you put on this list, you are committing to complete. First, you list your appointments from your calendar and any reoccurring tasks.

Next check through your weekly goals and list any actions you can take to move you forward in them.

Finally check your single action sheet and add any items that you can complete. Avoid the temptation to overload your day. It is better to get into the habit of completing one or two important tasks that will move you closer to your goals than get bogged down with loads of busy work.

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