When you wish upon a star...

Remember all the times you’ve said, “I wish”? And do you remember that really good paycheck you got that one time? Don’t you wish you could get one like that every week?

Wouldn’t it be great to be at the top of the board each month? Wouldn’t it have been great to have been able to buy every present you wish you could have bought for your family and friends last year?

We all learned to wish when we were kids.

We wish on stars, we pull the wish bone, we do wishful thinking, we throw money into the wishing well, we blow out candles and make a wish. And how about the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow or the lottery? More big wishes.

Did you know that there really is a secret to getting everything you could possibly want? Did you know that there really is a quick and easy way to turn wishes and dreams into the real thing? Did you know you can even go after the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and get it? It’s almost like magic.

Is there a trick? Nope – not at all. While there’s “no free lunch” for anything worthwhile, there is a quick and easy way you can get just about whatever you want without risking jail-time. Learning how to make all your dreams and wishes come true for yourself and your family is really just a step-by-step process that anyone can take.

Did you notice that word “secret” above? That wasn’t just a word to get your attention, there is a secret to getting what you want and it’s called goal setting. And there’s a secret to making goal setting work for you.

The secret is goal setting!

Believe it or not, the first step is the hardest for most, and that’s simply understanding and believing that goal setting actually works to improve your sales, your income, your life, everything! Why? Because we’ve all been taught the wrong way to set goals and because we didn’t do it right, we failed to hit our goals most of the time. Now, we’ve been conditioned to disbelieve that goal setting is the secret to success.

About 20 years ago, one of our trainers who was with us briefly tried to talk me out of covering “goal setting”. His argument was that people wanted to know how to sell and close and we were just using up extra time we could be spending on selling. He never bought into the real value of tracking, either. Tracking is the very first step to setting and reaching goals. Did I mention he isn’t with us any longer?

I’d be the first to agree that salespeople and managers do not normally sign up for a class with Tracking and Goal Setting as their primary motive. Most of us learned through negative experiences in those monthly sales kick-off meetings to turn goal setting into nothing more than a ‘high-ball’ session. The peer pressure and pressure from management in the meeting helped us set goals we knew we wouldn’t hit.

That trainer wanted goal setting out of our training programs, but I knew from my own personal experiences of learning how to go from the 8-car guy to the 38-car guy that goal setting was way more important than closing.

Why? Because without a clear, realistic and achievable goal to improve 20% (or whatever you choose), and without a clear, well laid out step-by-step plan to hit the goal, and without making it a priority each day to follow the plan, nothing really happens – it can’t.

We didn’t change our training, but we did start tracking “The most important thing I learned in class” on all of our attendee surveys everyone fills out after class. Before class, goal setting wasn’t even on the list of things most people wanted to learn, but at the end of class...

90% of the attendees in our sales and management courses tell us goal setting is the most important topic they learn about.

Most people told us they thought they were goal oriented or goal driven. The problem: they weren’t following the rules.

Goal setting is pretty simple, but there are clearly defined rules to goal setting that you have to follow to make it work. And when you do follow those rules, statistically, you’re guaranteed a 94% success rate. But, and this is a BIG BUT, if you don’t follow the rules to setting and reaching goals, the exact opposite is true. Statistically, you will not hit your goals, no matter how hard you try.

There just isn’t room in an article to tell the complete story of what it takes to sell or what it takes to become successful in sales. I can’t fully cover goal setting and the other success skills well enough in here to teach you how to set goals, follow the steps and hit the mark. That’s why I wrote my new book, “Earn Over $100,000 Selling Cars Every Year” (get it today – it’s FREE for now), because without learning the Success Skills I cover in my new book, all of the selling skills, closing skills and negotiation skills will only get you so far in sales – and you’ll hit a wall just like I did until I learned to control my career. You have to learn how to be successful in sales, not just learn how to sell.

If you already understand goal setting, that’s great. Even if you already do though, it sure can’t hurt to learn even more about how to earn hundreds of thousands per year selling cars.