It's Monday morning. What are you going to achieve this week? Have you set yourself or your team some targets or goals?
You might think it's enough that you're still in business on Friday. Simply surviving is a goal in its own right, particularly in the current economic climate. Worthy though it might be, it's not going to help your business to grow.
Don't wait for the economy to pick up before you start planning for growth. Another economic think tank - this time the Ernst & Young Item Club - has given its view on the near future. They're predicting another difficult year in 2010, as tax rises, including VAT returning to 17.5%, kick in. So if you're waiting for the economy to pick up before planning for growth, you'll be waiting a long time.
Start planning how your business will prosper, rather than just survive, in this climate. If your business is still in survival mode it's time to start accepting the current conditions as the norm for the next few years.
Setting targets is a great place to start. Successful sales managers motivate their staff with targets. That's because goals motivate people to try harder, and achieving them becomes a reward in itself.
If, on Friday lunchtime, you're one deal short of your target for the week, you'll make one last push to bring it in by 5pm. But if your goal is simply 'do as many as possible' it's easy to stop at lunch and say "that's enough".
The principle applies to more than just sales managers. Credit controllers can target bringing in a certain amount of money, and every job can be given some sort of target.
So make it your priority, on Monday, to set some goals for the week. And on Friday, look back and see what you've achieved. You'll be surprised at the difference it makes.
Here's the BBC news article about the Item Club report.
