JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2017 | TAMPA BAY MAGAZINE 65 THREE QUESTIONS FOR THE NEW YEAR By Jim Marshall and Clint Babcock Sandler Training of Tampa Bay With the arrival of the New Year, you may have already had the opportunity to reflect upon the past year and formulate goals (resolutions?) for 2017. If not, “now” is a good time to ask yourself three questions: EDITOR’S NOTE: Sandler Training provides proven, effective sales, corporate and management training to high-achieving companies and individuals throughout Tampa Bay. Call Jim Marshall or Clint Babcock at (813) 287-1500. Do you want to grow your business revenues and profits? Do you want to increase your income? Perhaps you want to expand your territory or staff, develop key accounts, or grow your customer base. Whatever your goals, they must be specific, and you must be clear about why those accomplishments are important to you. And the “why” must be significant. The motivation to pursue goals that have superficial meanings or only provide short-term gratification fades quickly. Once you’ve decided exactly what you want to accomplish, you must determine how you’re going to do it. For each goal, start with the end result—the accomplishment of the goal—and work backwards, identifying the sequence of steps that will lead up to that accomplishment. You should also be brutally honest with yourself about your ability and willingness to execute each step of your goal-achievement plan. Even the most well-thought-out intentions will fail if you lack the skills to perform any of the steps or you’re unwilling to do what needs to be done. If you’ll need additional resources, for instance, make arrangements well in advance so you don’t slow down your progress…or worse, bring it to a grinding halt. In order to determine if you’re on track and on schedule in accomplishing your goals, include benchmarks you must hit to measure your progress at points along the way. If you’re off track, you can make adjustments to get back on track and back on schedule. If you wait until the end of the goal period to measure results, it will be too late to do anything about it. Worse, you’ll feel defeated and even more reluctant to start down that path again. The year will be exactly what you make of it…nothing more and nothing less. You have a choice: you can develop lofty goals; you can develop play-it-safe goals; or you can simply let things happen as they may (which means you’ll likely find yourself playing a part in the accomplishment of someone else’s goal). 1. What specifically do I want to accomplish in 2017? 2. How will I do it? 3. How will I know that I’m on the correct path for accomplishment?
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