How to Set Goals

What is the difference between a goal and a dream?

Dream: Something you fantasize about. Something you hope will happen one day.
Goal: Something you take steps to reach. Something that WILL happen one day.

My dad, until the day he died, dreamed of being a country music musician. He had the talent--he could beautifully play the guitar and he had an excellent voice. He was also a pretty good song writer. The problem was that he would always talk about being a country star but he would never take the steps to do it. He didn't have a clear cut plan--just the hope that someone would "discover" him as he sat on his porch, in the middle of the country a hundred miles from Nashville, picking at his guitar. Once again--he had the raw talent--he just lacked a plan to put the talent to use to accomplish his dream.

We are like that in the car business. We hope to sell X amount of cars but really don't know what we need to do to sell X amount of cars. In other words, how many people do we need to talk to? How many do we need to get into a test drive? How many do we need to write up?

When I got into the car business, the owner of the dealership used to have us fill out a daily work plan. Basically, we would forecast our sales using this formula.

Our plan was to get 75% of the people we talked to into a test drive. We were to get 50% into a write up situation. If we did both of those, we were expected to sell 20% of the people we would talk to. So--if we wanted to sell 2 cars, we needed to talk to 10 people, get 7.5 into a test drive, write up 5 to sell our 20% which is 2. Want to sell 20? Multiply those numbers by 10.

Our owner swore up and down that he had never seen that formula fail in his 20 years of being in the car business and you know what? I believe him.

OK--how do you achieve goals?

1) You have a concrete destination. "I want to sell 10 cars this month."
2) You figure out what you need to do to accomplish these goals. "I need to talk to 50 people and get 75% of them to test drive and 50% of them into a write up situation."
3) You break them down into smaller steps. "So--with 20 working days this month, I'll need to talk to 2.5 people each day (hope the math is right--too lazy to get out the calculator)
4) You need to remind yourself of your goal. Put it on a business card and look at each day. Put it on your mirror so you look at it when you brush your teeth in the morning. You get the picture.
5) You need to track your progress. Keep a graph of where you are and where you need to be. By the way, my Car Sales Assistant 2008 software does this for you--it will let you set goals and track your progress towards them.
6) You need to do everything in your power to reach your goals.
7) You need to set realistic goals. "I want to sell 500 cars this month" isn't that realistic. 20 is.
8) You need to reward yourself WHEN (not IF) you reach your goals. Take your spouse out to dinner. Buy that video game you've wanted. Buy a nice piece of jewelery.
9) Rinse and repeat next month.

OK--here are some stats I remember. I might be a few percent off but you will get the picture.

3% of people set goals. 97% of the wealth in this country is held by 3% of the population.

In World War 2, if the American generals would have sat around and simply said, "We want to win the war" then the war would not have ended like it did. Instead, they said "To win the war, we need to take Berlin." In order to accomplish that, "We need to storm the beach at Normandy" then "we need to storm across France" then "we need to pop into Germany" and "we need to take Berlin." Then they broke down those broad steps into smaller steps. "To take Normandy--first we need to land thousands of solders on a beach" and then we need to get them to "storm the beach" and then "take out the pill boxes," etc.

Uh--get the picture? Set your realistic goals and you will reach them and be very successful. There is no doubt about it. Don't just sit there waiting for something to happen. Set your goals and make them happen.