Goals are essential to achieve success because they keep us focused and motivated. Without goals we would aimlessly go down the path of life without any direction, ambition, or hope. Goals are not only something we aim to achieve, but are also markers that let us know we are doing the right things to get ourselves to places we want to be. If you can see yourself moving along the right path and making progress toward your ultimate goals, you should feel more motivated and be more successful.

Let’s look at some goal setting strategies to help us achieve success.

Know What You Want To Accomplish

The most important thing about goal setting for success is to know what you want to accomplish. Some people might think this is obvious and perhaps it is, but you’d be surprised by the number of people who have no clue as to what they want to do with their life. If you don’t know what it is you want to accomplish then there is no way you can begin to even think about setting goals. Thus knowing what you want to do is the most important element to goal setting.

Start Small

Every major goal consists of a series of smaller goals. For example, if your goal is to get a college degree there are things you will have to do to get it such as selecting a college, taking entrance examinations, enrolling, etc. These are all the smaller or short-term goals that will lead you to the main goal of receiving a college degree. And often smaller goals such as these consist of even smaller goals.

Once you know your primary goal you will want to make a list of the short-term goals you will need to accomplish to get to your main goal. A list like this is the first step to developing your plan and becomes like a road map directing you along your way. Without a plan or map it is easy for us to get lost or take the wrong turn on our journey.

Deadlines

All good plans operate on a timeline that has within specific deadlines to accomplish certain things. Big businesses always use timeline and deadlines, that’s one reason they are able to grow. Your goal too can be seen as a business venture. On your list of short-term goals you should specify, in realistic terms, the deadlines you wish to have each one completed within. But be realistic and flexible in defining these deadline dates, as things do happen in life that could delay the accomplishment of certain steps. Back to the college degree as an example; perhaps you are six units short of receiving your degree, but the classes you need to take won’t be available until the following semester. This is something out of your immediate control but does affect you completing your education by the deadline you had noted in your plan.

Rewards

Life is a journey and it is not a simple cliché to say that it is the journey that matters, not the destination. You should take time each day or at least regularly, to recognize what you have achieved and to take pride in that. If you never do that, you won’t be living a happy life so what will be the point in going for these goals anyway?

Recognizing your achievements and rewarding yourself builds up your confidence and makes further, more ambitious goal setting possible.

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Knowing who you are and where you are going will give you the insight for your future.

What are your goals?

Getting ahead in life is all about focus and achievement in your life. Pretty big stuff, but not so big that you can’t get your hands around it and get back to the basics so you can achieve your life’s goals.

Here are a couple of questions you should be asking yourself:

1. Did I accomplish what I set out to do last week?
2. Did I even have an idea of what I wanted to accomplish?
3. Did I play the blame game?
4. Was it the economy that affected my goals?

If you have read anything about goals, principled leadership or even goal setting from an achievement perspective you realize that every one of us allows something to get in the way.

Its part of that negative, skeptical thought pattern engrained inside of us. You just naturally create barriers. But there is good news,barriers are meant to be overcome! Failure is the teacher for success. When you realize what your failures are, you can move on to your success.

A great way to do that is to focus on your past and your present, and use it to inform your future. First look at your past; all the great, terrible, wonderful, unique experiences in your life that makes you who you are.

If you look back in your life I bet you will remember those unexpected experiences in life that were surprises, not looked for as well as those experiences you wanted to happen and then found not as rewarding as you anticipated.

Disappointment is just as important as success and self-awareness. Any time you find out what gives you a sense of worth and value that experience is worth whatever it costs you.

Additional questions you should consider asking yourself:

1. Is your present what you expected?
2. Are you happy, fulfilled and motivated?
3. Are you blaming someone else for the failures in your life?
4. Do you even know why you don’t feel fulfilled, motivated or happy or sad or upset?

A lot of us are not even aware what causes these feelings. The point is, never quit looking, asking questions, reading and studying.

Success requires lots of diligent thinking, hard work and perseverance. If someone told you it would be easy, they told you a lie. If they told you it would be the greatest thing you ever lived, they told you the truth.

Your future is the jar full of dreams, possibility and glory. It is the amazing stuff that drives anyone to achieve anything. Success is born out of a lot of practice, study, and focused effort over many years. It often means taking risk for our actions.

If you say at this point “you just don’t understand my situation. It just isn’t possible right now to…” You are afraid to risk what you have now in order to get what you really want in the future. You think it is more important to hold on to what you have now, than to reach for a life-time of dreams.

You haven’t really assessed what you really have to have and what you can give up. You haven’t determined where your key principles are and how you are going to change your own actions to realize that dream.

Combine the past, present and future into the image of what you want to become. Your brain is a powerful tool and is created to help you grow into who you want to become. The sad fact is many of us grew into what someone told us to be and never listened to the still voice inside that said I have the power to be all I can be no matter what other people say.

Make the step today and be all you can be and reach for the stars.

What is the purpose of a business? Every time I ask this question during a business seminar, the immediate answer that I get back is, “To make a profit.”

But this answer is wrong. The purpose of a business is to create and keep a customer. If a business successfully creates and keeps customers in a cost-effective way, it will make a profit while continuing to survive and thrive. If, for any reason, a business fails to attract or sustain a sufficient number of customers, it will experience losses. Too many losses will lead to the demise of the enterprise.

According to Dun and Bradstreet, the single, most important reason for the failure of businesses in America is lack of sales. And, of course, this refers to resales as well as initial sales.

So your company’s job is to create and keep a customer, and your job is exactly the same. Remember, no matter what your official title is, you are a salesperson for yourself and your company. And the best way to increase your value as a salesperson is to build your customer base. The two most important words to keep in mind in developing a successful customer base are Positioning and Differentiation.

Positioning refers to the way your customers think and talk about you and your company when you are not there. The position that you hold in the customer’s mind determines all of his reactions and interactions with you. Your position determines whether or not your customer buys, whether he buys again and whether he refers others to you. Everything that you do with regard to your customer affects the way your customer thinks about you.

Differentiation refers to your ability to separate yourself and your product or service from that of your competitors. And it is the key to building and maintaining a competitive advantage. This is the advantage that you and your company have over your competitors in the same marketplace the unique and special benefits that no one else can give your customer.

There are three keys to keeping customers for life: relationship selling, partnering for profit, and consultative selling. These are all methods for differentiating yourself from anyone else who is offering the same product or service. They are ways to get customers and keep them. I will explain each of these in detail.

Relationship Selling is the core of all modern selling strategies. Your ability to develop and maintain long-term customer relationships is the foundation for your success as a salesperson and your success in business.

For your customer, a buying decision usually means a decision to enter into a long-term relationship with you and your company. It is very much like a “business marriage.” Before the customer decides to buy, he can take you or leave you.

He doesn’t need you or your company. He has a variety of options and choices open to him, including not buying anything at all. But when your customer makes a decision to buy from you, he becomes dependent on you. And since he has probably had bad buying experiences in the past, he is very uneasy and uncertain about getting into this kind of dependency relationship.

What if you let this customer down? What if your product does not work as you promised? What if you don’t service it and support it as you promised? What if it breaks down and he can’t get it replaced? These are real dilemmas that go through the mind of every customer when it comes time to make the critical buying decision.

Because of the complexity of most products and services today, especially high-tech products, the relationship is actually more important than the product.

The customer doesn’t know the ingredients or components of your product, or how your company functions, or how he will be treated after he has given you his money, but he can make an assessment about you and about the relationship that has developed between the two of you over the course of the selling process. So in reality, the customer’s decision is based on the fact that he has come to trust you and believe in what you say. In many cases, the quality of your relationship with the customer is the competitive advantage that enables you to edge out others who may have similar products and services.

The single biggest mistake that causes salespeople to lose customers is taking those customers for granted. Almost 70 percent of customers who walked away from their existing suppliers later replied that they made the change primarily because of a lack of attention from the company.

Beyond relationship selling, the second key to keeping customers for life is the “partnering for profit” approach to business sales. When you deal with a businessperson, you can be sure of one thing: that person thinks about his business day and night. It is very close to him. It is dear to his heart. And if you come in and talk to him and ask him questions about his business, looking for ways to help him run his business better, the customer is going to warm up to you and want to be associated with you and your company.


As a partner, you should always be looking to help your customer to cut costs and improve results in his or her area of responsibility. You should look for ways to help your customer in non-business areas as well. You should position yourself as someone who cares more about the success of your customer than anything else, even more than you care about selling your product or service. This approach to partnering in profit with your customer is a key way to differentiate yourself and to keep your customer for the indefinite future.

There is a principle of reciprocity in business that is extremely powerful. It is simply this: If you do something nice for someone else, they will feel obligated to do something nice for you. You should be looking for opportunities to go the extra mile, to do more than you are paid for, to put in more than you take out. By extending yourself, you improve your positioning in the customer’s mind and increasingly differentiate yourself and your company from your competitors who are after the same business. If you do this long enough and strong enough, you will eventually develop the partnership to the point where your competitors don’t have a chance against you.

The third part of keeping customers for life is the consulting approach to your customer, or what is called consultative selling. When you position yourself as a consultant, you are really positioning yourself to serve your customer as a problem solver. Instead of trying to sell something to your customer, you concentrate all of your efforts and attention on helping your customer solve his problems, achieve his goals, or satisfy his needs. You ask excellent questions that help your customer think through his situation in greater depth. And you listen carefully to the answers, knowing that listening builds trust.

When customers are asked why they decided to buy from a particular salesperson or company, they invariably give these reasons: the reputation of the company, the level of service and support that the company offers, the reliability of the company and the salesperson, the responsiveness of the organization to complaints and requests, and the quality of the individual salesperson with whom they have been dealing. Price ranks at number seven or eight, if it comes up at all in the surveys. This is important for you to know because it is amazing how many salespeople get sidetracked into negotiating on the basis of price and then they can’t understand why they failed to get the sale.

84 percent of all sales in America originate from the recommendations of satisfied customers. A referral to a new customer is worth ten times more than a cold call. And it is 16 times easier to sell a satisfied customer something new than it is to sell something to a brand new prospect. In the final analysis, dedicating yourself to serving your customers in such a way that you keep them for life is one of the smartest and most profitable things that you can ever do.

About The Author:
Brian Tracy is legendary in sales, addressing more than 250,000 men and women each year on the subjects of management, leadership, and sales effectiveness. He has produced more than 300 audio/video programs and has written 36 books, including his just-released books “TurboStrategy” and “Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life.” He can be reached at (858) 481-2977 or www.briantracy.com