But it’s our experience which comes from training builders all over Australia, New Zealand, The United Kingdom, Canada and North America that many of our clients have previously set goals but have failed to achieve them.
As a result, they question their ability to reach their targets and they begin to lose faith in the whole process.
This is one of the first things we address with any new client and what we're going to share with you today are 5 tips for setting goals so that you have a MUCH greater chance of achieving them.
So be clearly defined. We're talking about exactly what it is you want to achieve. So many builders say to us, “I want to increase sales," or "I want to make more money," or "I want to work fewer hours,” and that is simply not good enough. Be clear about what you want. What do you want to increase your sales to; $2m, $5m, $10m? Whatever the number is, write it down and set a deadline.
This puts pressure on you, it adds clarity and focus and it’s very, very motivating for you.
This is a very important point. Too many business owners start the year by setting goals and then filing them away somewhere. In fact, almost every business owner that sets goals only OCCASIONALLY refers to those goals which means they lose focus, motivation and eventually belief.
A great way to keep your goals front of mind is to develop a daily ritual where you write them down on your notepad every single day. This process will bring clarity and focus to your working day, meaning you’ll spend less time getting caught up in all the distractions and activities that do not matter.
And because you have a clear picture of where you are heading you’ll spend more time working on activities that form part of the long game.
Your goals must become a part of your subconscious thinking every day, all day long. When this happens your decisions will be based on your long term objectives rather than short term gains.
The most successful builders we work with are the ones that submit their goals to us every week detailing what they achieved in the past 7 days, and what they are working on in the next 7 days along with their short, mid and long term goals. You see, everything is connected, so if we don’t work on activities that are connected to our long term goals right now, they simply become other people's successes.
When you plan your day, make sure it’s in line with your goals. When you negotiate a contract, make sure it’s in line with your goals. When you set a meeting, make sure it’s in line with your goals. You need to increase by 10x the time you spend thinking about your goals, starting right now.
This may sound extreme but if you use the same approach to goal setting as everyone else, you’ll get the same results.
When you get to a point where you spend 80% of your day thinking about and making decisions based on your goals, you will be unstoppable.
Goal setting may start with a 10 year target, but it should be broken down and segmented into 3 year, 1 year, quarterly, monthly, weekly and daily targets.
For instance, your goal may be to franchise your building company, or maybe to have a General Manager run it for you in 10 years. To get to that point you want to achieve annual sales of $6m within 3 years, which means you need to hit $2.5m in the next 12 months.
Break that down a little further and maybe you have to increase your margins in order to scale up your company. So you plan to implement a new sales and marketing process within 3 months.
Dig deeper and that means updating your website within the next 30 days.
This week you need to appoint a web designer to do the work.
Today you need to contact 3 web designers and get their ideas and quotes.
So let me ask you, what do you need to be doing right now in order to achieve your goals?
Check your inbox, login to Facebook, quote a job, or get on the phone to those web designers?
Leave space at the top of your pad to actually write down your goals and make sure you have allocated time in your day to be working on activities that take you one step closer to them.
Budget your time to work on your goals, then fill the remainder of your day with all that other stuff you need to do in order to keep the wheels turning on your business.
So that’s a 5 step process and I can PROMISE you that less than 1% of builders are even doing half of them and that is why they are not getting the results they want. But if you adopt all 5 I can GUARANTEE it will make a massive difference to your success.
In order to achieve your goals, it helps to follow a process that keeps you on task. By implementing a repeatable, scalable, proven process specifically developed for residential building companies you’ll be able to stay on task and focused so that you can grow your building company profitably.
To discover the process for running a successful building company, download the proven sales process for builders by clicking on the link below.