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Goal Tracking
October 28, 2009We’ve been discussing goals – sharing them, exceeding them, taking them over the top. This month, it’s tracking your goals. Gotta do it for ultimate success!Goal Tracking: Follow the Bread CrumbsSetting goals is not enough. If it were, I could stop the goal setting process right now and end this book. Once they are set, you must track them.I love legendary NBA basketball coach Pat Riley’s book and the story of how he set a goal for each starter on the Lakers to be the best at their position. He posted the stats of the best player in the league at each position, and then he compared his players’ stats to those top players as benchmarks. This posting was public, posted for all to see.By the end of the season, he had the best players at every position, statistically speaking. And they won the championship – Riley’s ultimate goal. That’s the perfect example of setting specific goals and then tracking them each week. Not all of us will have a sales manager as good as Pat Riley, but we can track and measure our own results compared to both our activity goals and our results goals.A Simple Sales Report Most companies have a standard sales report form. The longer I train salespeople, the simpler I realize these reports should be. Here is what you should track each week – new activity, follow-up activity, and future activity. For example, it could look something like this:
| Week Of: | New Presentations | Follow-Up Visits | Appointments Set Next Week |
| July 1st | 3 | 7 | 4 |
| July 7thJuly 14th | 43 | 68 | 39 |
If you want to track daily activity, then just expand your report. By tracking this activity, you know where you stand each week. You’ll find that activity is a precursor to results.You also need a simplistic report for your results because most results are measured in dollars. If you sell something that isn’t measured in dollars, for example, if it is measured in units, then adjust the report from dollars to units to fit your company’s tracking method:
| Week Of: | Number of Sales | $$ Value of Sales | Year to Date#s | Year to Date $$ |
| July 1st | 3 | $3,000 | 46 | $46,000 |
| July 7thJuly 14th | 46 | $4,000$6,000 | 5056 | $50,000$56,000 |
Again, it’s simple to expand this to daily results.“It’s hard to win if you don’t keep score,” said my first sales manager, Sam Johnson. I say it’s hard to score if you don’t know the score.From time to time, I meet a salesperson who says: “All my company ever wants me to do is fill out reports.”I’m sure that’s true sometimes, but the truth is this: What could your company ask for that you aren’t tracking yourself? The more you know about what you’re doing, the more effective you’ll be.To Your Success,Tom