SMART Goal Setting For Business

Goal setting is crucial if you want to be successful in Direct Sales or working from home. While working from home offers you the freedom to set your own schedule, you must also exercise your own discipline to meet your performance objectives, which can sometimes be a challenge. Setting goals for your direct sales business can be easier if you break it down into manageable tasks and using the acronym SMART is a great way to make sure you’re setting goals you can achieve.

S – Specific

Your goal needs to be specific. Something general, like “I want to be rich” won’t work. You need to set a goal that specifically says what you want to achieve. You can have goals like “I want to take a vacation to Disney World with my family in November” or “I want to pay off a credit card with a $2000 balance”. A specific goal like this lets you set a plan of action and measure how close you are to achieving it.

M – Measurable

Once you have your specific goal, you can set incremental measurements to see how close you’re getting. If your goal is to speak to 10 new people a week about your business opportunity, then you can measure your progress by seeing if you’ve spoken to at least 1 new person a day. Measuring your progress throughout your day and week lets you make ongoing adjustments to your action plan.

A – Attainable

It’s unrealistic to set goals that you can’t reach. Not only does it make it extremely difficult to meet your goal, but it sets you up for disappointment in the long run. Setting a goal to become an NBA player at the age of 50 is not likely to be attainable. On the other hand, setting a goal to purchase your first home with your business earnings is something completely attainable with some planning!  Having an attainable objective makes the rewards all that much sweeter when you do meet your goal.

R – Realistic

You want your goals to be realistic. Setting a goal to win the lottery one day may sound fun, but something more realistic is to set a goal for what you’d like your yearly income to be. If you want to earn a certain amount of money from your business, set the total, then work backwards to determine how much you need to sell to earn that amount on a monthly, weekly, and daily basis; Likewise with building up your savings. Set your total goal amount, and work backwards down to a weekly or daily level to see if it’s something realistic for you to achieve.

T – Time – Bound

Your goals MUST be time-bound. Whether your deadline is 1 day, 1 month, or 1 year, putting a time line on your goal lets you create steps to reach your goal and keep you engaged with your tasks. It lets you measure your achievements and progress against your deadline to help you plan how much work is still to be done and what adjustments need to be made. Adding a deadline is the most important step, because after all, in the words of the famous investor Robert Herjavec from Shark Tank, “A goal without a deadline is just a dream”.

By using the SMART way to set goals, you’re setting yourself up for success in direct selling, working from home, and being your own boss.