Selling and The Dark Side of Goal Setting

What drives you ahead or holds you back is in your subconscious mind. Make sure goals are high enough and set guidelines for your subconscious mind to accept your goals.

Be sure goals are realistic and raise them as you find success. However overstretched goals often compromise efforts. If your subconscious mind figures out you cannot accomplish something, it's likely to move on to new ideas.

To get motivated is one thing but to stay motivated long-term is a different issue. Lofty goals can take additional time, extra effort, and strong persistence than simple accomplishments.

Effective goal setting is mind-mapping success. Goals shouldn't trap you into unfilled commitments and potential failure.

The Dark Side Of Goal Setting

We set our goals for personal reasons. Companies set goals for their reasons. Setting sales goals has collective reasons.

However, when sales goals are arbitrarily set without regard to realistic objectives, salespeople who fall short of goals may do what is necessary to hold on to their job.

We have seen business scandals and executives caught cooking the books to meet financial goals. College executives exclude students with low scores on standardized tests to keep averages up.

It's not uncommon for salespeople to produce phony sales projections and exaggerate sales opportunities to keep from being penalized.

Setting unreasonable goals may become a motivator of poor behaviors. Additionally, unreasonable and unfair goal setting may create psychological problems as it forces people to admit failure they may have little control over.

Selling is measured on performance and numbers. Illogical and unethical goals may overstate what can be accomplished in order to spur people on but often it inadvertently inhibits success.

Sales people don't need extra reasons to fudge numbers or mislead when it comes to sales performance, they need an environment that allows them to produce more. It's better to keep people motivated to reaching goals, not avoiding them.

Brian Bieler shares his 35 years of experience as President of Viacom Radio and VP/General Manger of 7 Major Market Radio stations. Download Brian's free business and sales eBooks at http://www.brianbieler.com/