Page 43 - Social Media Marketing

Motivating Yourself with Goals and Rewards 21

Of course, setting yourself up for chronic failure is never a good
idea. You can end up being a tremendous success and feeling lousy
about it. However, only you really know what you are capable of
achieving, and sometimes you don't even know that until the day
when you achieve the impossible.

Setting Deadlines

A goal without a deadline is a pipe dream, which is okay for some
goals. You may toy with the idea of writing a book someday or
retiring to your private island in the Pacific. If you really want to
achieve your goal, however, you need to set a deadline.

In some cases, the deadline may be set for you. For example, your
manager may set a sales quota for you that you are expected to meet
for the year, quarter, or month. If your company does not set a goal
for you and specify a deadline, then do it yourself. Again, make
sure the deadline is challenging but at least somewhere in the realm
of reality.

Breaking Down Your Goal into Milestones

Challenging goals can often seem overwhelming. When I set a goal
to sell 300 homes in a year, it seemed a little unrealistic until I
broke it down. To sell 300 homes in a single year, I would need
to sell about 25 homes per month or 6 per week. That was still a
little overwhelming, so I started breaking it down even more. I
could sell 4 FSBOs (For Sale By Owner properties) per month,
6 expired listings, and 8 foreclosures. That was 18, meaning I would
need to secure only 7 more traditional listings per month. That
seemed doable.

When I began drawing up my plans for increasing sales, my goal
became even more realistic. I figured that I could significantly cut
down on the time I spent showing homes by driving three or four
couples around at once rather than one couple at a time. I also
hired assistants to answer the phones and process the transactions.