Do you have a plan for your life? Here's some help creating your Long Term Goals 😃

Published: Tue, 07/16/19

Creating Long Term Goals

by Dave Kahle

One of the habits often practiced by highly successful people is the habit of regular goal setting. There is a reason for that. Goals compel you to work with discipline and concentration rather than going about your job mindlessly and routinely. Goal setting is a discipline that helps you focus.

This doesn’t mean that you can’t do your job without goals. You can, and many salespeople do. But the discipline of goal setting forces you to think about what you do. It moves you out of the realm of being reactive -- doing what other people want you to do -- to being proactive -- doing what you want to do.

Ours is a world that is more and more full of stuff to do; interesting things, multiple tasks and unlimited opportunities. Over the course of your career, you are going to be presented with thousands of opportunities and literally millions of decisions. If you’re going to maintain your sanity and have any kind of life, you need to focus on the most important of that chorus of possibilities crying out for your attention. That’s what long-term goals help you to do.

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Having used Dave Kahle's excellent sales training materials at our company for many years, I've always been a fan of his. I regret never having had a chance to meet Dave, but after reading this book, I now feel that I know him on a personal basis. Over 40 years ago, after backing into a technical sales career as a young Christian because my father desperately needed a traveling salesman for the company he founded, I often felt that I should have answered a "higher calling." Dave also had his struggles in that area and through his own story, he shows that Christianity and sales success can (and should) go together. In fact, sales can be the special ministry to which you are called and a role which you alone can fulfill. ~ Tom Snow, CEO, T. J. Snow Company, Chattanooga, TN

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Here’s how to go about creating long-term goals.

1. Select an area in which to concentrate.

Since we are talking about long-term goals -- say 10 or more years into the future -- you should be working with fundamental aspects of your life. I often suggest that people think first about these five areas of their lives:

       1. Spiritual
       2. Financial
       3. Career
       4. Relationships (social)
       5. Physical

Pick one area, work on it, and then move on to another area until you have all five fundamental aspects of your life covered with long-term goals.

2. Brainstorm (Daydream)

Next, daydream about what you’d like to achieve with respect to that part of your life or job. Kick back, relax, and begin to list on a piece of paper all the things you’d like to accomplish in the area on which you’re focusing. Create a list of your dreams. Don’t edit or judge what you’ve written, rather, just make a long list of your dreams. Keep the time frame in mind. We’re not talking about next month. These are long term, decades ahead, lifetime-ish sorts of dreams.

Nobody else can do this for you because no one really knows your situation and your aspirations better than you do.

Here’s an example. Let’s say that you are thinking about your career, and you’ve begun to daydream about what you’d like to accomplish in that area. You write these things down:

make a lot more money
become one of the top salespeople
advance into management
successfully go into business for myself
become a vice-president of sales somewhere

3. Prioritize

If you’ve done a good job daydreaming, you probably have a long list of things you’d like to accomplish. Unfortunately, you can’t do everything. You just don’t have enough time and energy to do everything you'd like to do. And, some of your possibilities, your daydreams, may be mutually exclusive. So, you must prioritize...[read more]

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