If you’ve been with me for any time, you know that I am a big fan of goal setting and planning.  Goalsetting, appropriately done, alleviates stress and ensures that when you’re up to your ass in alligators, you remember that you went in to drain the swamp.

Goals and plans are excellent for fulfilling visions and dreams, but that isn’t the best of them. The best of them is not what you achieve but what you become while pursuing the achievement.

When I was a little baby sales manager in NYC, with a team of 4 reps, I felt stifled.  My bones felt like prison bars.  I knew I needed to break out but didn’t know how.  Then, in 1995, I learned goal setting.  It changed everything.  Again, not just because I set my sights on this or that and set up a plan with timed actions.  No, it was who I had to become to follow that plan.  It was the discipline I had to learn, the advice I had to seek, the mentors I had to pursue, the research I had to do, and the books that led me from one great thinker to another.  Those collective actions busted me out.

When I look back at the stuck kid ineffectively shaking the bars and trying to open the door, I am grateful for the first key handed to me: the goal-setting process. It unlocked the first of thousands of doors I’ve since passed through. 

I’ve achieved many of the goals I’ve set over the past 29 years, and I am grateful for that.  Mostly, though, I am who I am because of the trying - not the getting.

I continue to use the process every year and create plans around those set goals.  Today, it may or may not have a lot to do with my performance – I’m not sure, but what I am sure of is that it reaffirms my identity, and that bolsters my performance.

Thank you, JC

Own Your Sales Gene…