Self-Management Habits Are Your Success in Sales

Good results come from strong self-management habits. The important point to remember, though, is that self-management habits are learned behavior . They can be changed. Your self-management habits may control your destiny, but you can control your habits . The first step is to change your thinking. Henry Ford put it this way, “Whether you think you can or you can’t, you’re right.” What you think is vitally important. You usually act in ways that are consistent with your beliefs. To become a master of your time, you must first believe you can do it.

Good self-managers enjoy their work because they accomplish more and they give themselves more credit. You can increase your performance (and your team’s performance) by improving your self-management habits. Setting personal and business goals are the starting point that will help you improve your self-management habits and your productivity .

How To Set Goals

1. Be Positive - State what you want to do. If you want to avoid or stop doing something, state your goal in terms of what you want to do instead.
2. Set a Deadline - A deadline provides you with the needed time frame for achieving your goal. It gives you something to aim for.
3. Be Specific - You’ll want to measure your progress as you work toward your goal. The more specific your goal, the easier it is to measure your progress. Always quantify your goal.
4. Be Realistic - Goals should be realistic and yet cause you to “stretch” to reach it. Setting unrealistically high goals will cause you or your people to feel badly for attaining only 90%, or worse, they may not even try to make it. Better to set smaller goals, meet them, and then set a higher goal.
5. Write Your Goal Down - You must be able to write your goal down. Your goal statement must answer as many of the following questions as possible.

• Who?
• Will do what?
• When?
• Where?
• To what extent?
• To what degree?
• How much? How long? How Hard? etc.

Example: My goal is to meet all of my YTD sales objectives by the end of the third quarter. I will achieve this by solidifying my customer base and actively looking for additional opportunities.

The example above emphasizes doing something. It describes what the accomplished goal will look like.

Your Success Process

1. Prioritize your goals.
2. Break each of your goals into a series of small activities or steps necessary to reach that goal.
3. Prioritize or arrange the steps required into a logical sequence.
4. Set your objectives for each of the steps.
5. Objectives follow the goal setting guidelines.

• Be specific.
• Be positive.
• Set a deadline.