Why bother with activity goals?
For many of the same reasons that it’s good for sales people to commit to goals. The world in which we live is constantly pressuring us to spend our energy in different ways. We are constantly enticed to more and more trivia.
Ask any sales manager how easy it is to discover, one day, that you have spent most of the week dealing with administrative trivia and not doing a thing to improve the performance of the sales people. It happens constantly. Without a commitment to those activities that you know to be highly effective, you’ll find yourself rendered ineffective by the press of the urgent and the enticement of the
trivial.
So, once a year or so, think about what are the most important things to do; the activities to which you want to commit. Then make a commitment to a measurable quantity of those things. Create a written goal to “work once a month with every sales person,” or “call every sales person once a week.” That process will be a big step forward in your productivity by keeping you focused on the
processes that bring results.
Personal Development Goals
The second kind of goal to create are those dealing with personal development. These are goals that spur us to become better, more competent and more valuable people. They articulate an improvement in skills, the acquisition of competencies, the addition of knowledge or the participation in learning events that you would like to achieve this year. I’ll explain each.
Improvement in job-related skills.
You may, at the beginning of the year, decide that you really do need to do better at coaching your sales people. That’s a skill that takes time and practice to develop and which helps you do better at the job you are doing. So, when you decide to improve in this area, you make a commitment to improve a skill that directly impacts your job.
Acquisition of collateral competencies.
These are things that you learn which improve your value to the company and qualify you to do something other than the job you have. For example, you may decide to improve your strategic planning skills. Not that you use these skills that much in the job that you have, but it’s a competency that will make you more valuable to the company. And, who knows, if you become CEO one day, you’ll
need that.
Addition of knowledge.
You decide to learn things that you don’t now know. Knowledge is different than skills. For example, you can determine to improve your knowledge of a certain product line or a market segment. That’s knowledge. Improving your coaching ability is a skill. It requires you to do something. Improving your knowledge is information you acquire. To grow more valuable and
competent in your job, you need to do both.
Participate in learning events.
Sometimes, you can invest in your own development by participating in a learning event with only a vague end result in mind. Let’s say, for example, that you decide to go to a seminar on “Leadership skills for the 21st century.” You’re not exactly sure what you’re going to learn, but you feel confident that you’ll come out of that event with something. In this case, your focus is not on the
end result that you want, you’re more open to the serendipity learning that you expect to happen as a result of your involvement in the event.
Let’s put all of this together in a summary with some examples.
1. Consolidate the performance goals for your group.
For example: “My sales people will produce $1,000,000 in sales this year.”
2. Create appropriate activity goals, like these:
“I will travel one day a month with every sales person.”
“I will talk with each sales person every week.”
3. Focus on yourself. Identify some development goals for you personally.
“I will attend three seminars in the next 12 months.”
“I will improve my coaching skills.”
Having done this, you’ve used the goal-setting process to identify the most important things you can do this year. Good for you. You’ll be much more effective as a result.
