Systems are more effective than Goals

It was the worst thing that could ever happen to a salesperson. You called hard, and made every presentation flawless. You also follow-up well with all prospects. Yet at the end of the day your boss says that because you did not hit your sales goals, you are not effective. Sounds familiar?

In sales, you typically have sales goals. Monthly, quarterly, annually, depending on the length of the sales-cycle.

If you hit your goals, you're happy because you're probably getting paid pretty well and not getting fired.

But that happiness doesn't last very long because you always want more. Hitting 125% of your quota, consistently, becomes your new base-line as you too want to earn more incentives. So hitting your sales goals means more stress.

Why Systems are More Effective Than Goals

“If your goal is to lose ten pounds, you may wake up each day with  failure in mind because the goal is hard to reach, and you are only  progressing by small amounts. It takes up all your willpower. I recommend that instead of a goal you have a system. Willpower is a finite resource. Don’t pick a model that has failure built into it and  requires you constantly drain a finite resource.”

Scott Adams, the brilliant soul that he is, discovered something rather poignant a while back: a more impact means of achieving success is not by setting absurd goals, working towards those and ultimately achieving them through sheer luck and perseverance, but instead by creating systems that you apply to your day-to-day life that are designed to help you work towards a specific outcome.

A few examples:  

• Instead of setting the goal of writing a book and become a New York Times Bestselling Author, create a system of writing 1,000 words a day.
• Instead of setting the goal of losing 10-15 pounds and becoming a bodybuilding machine, create a system of eating healthier and exercising regularly.
• Instead of setting the goal of achieving $150,000 in revenue for your business and becoming profitable, break down the rough number of customer contacts/calls/emails it'll take to create a sale, multiply that by the number of customers you'll need to achieve that number and focus on building a daily habit of reaching the bare minimum to achieve those revenue numbers.  

Think about it this way: if you have a goal, you either hit it or you don't.

If you hit it, yay! You're happy for a moment, then you have a new goal.

If you don't, so what?  You have a system, not a goal!