I started out 2009 spending some time looking back, what I mean is I got together with my assistant managers and some key players on my team and took a long hard look at our successes and our failures in 2009. Why would I do that, well there are two reasons.

1. It is so important to understand why you had success, if you plan to succeed going forward and want to duplicate your previous success you must know what you did to achieve your past goals. So often I talk to sales representatives who have no idea why they achieved a goal, we work to talk about our successes so that we can effectively duplicate our success in the future. In short we try and take the “luck factor” out of the mix and understand why we are successful.

2. As well I analyze my failures, areas where I missed the mark and try and determine what I did or didn’t do to achieve the goal. One thing that I have learned is that goals not attained do not go away and guess what they are rarely ever lowered, so it is so important that we find a way to meet and exceed each goal going forward. Here are a couple of ways that I go about achieving missed goals.

• I look for better ways to meet the goal, the old saying is doing the same thing and expecting a different result is insanity. So I look for better ideas and processes to meet and exceed each goal. This of course means “CHANGE”, I know a nasty 6 letter word but very necessary if you plan to hit that goal going forward.
• As well I don’t complain or say such goal is not achievable, I take the mind set that as long as it is a goal it can be acheived and I must work to set the bar higher. Often I find that the real problem is that I have expected to little of myself or my team, I must set the bar higher and expect higher results or I will be doing a disservice to myself, my employees and the company that I work for.

Once I have looked back and have all the data in front of me, I put together a plan, a specific plan. This is so important because without a plan we plan to fail. Here is one of my favorite quotes….

“Setting a goal is NOT the main thing, it is deciding how you will go about achieving it and staying with that plan.” Tom Landry

Now with all of this information and planning its time to go out and execute.