We’ve all heard everybody in like a sales meeting you know, we’re sitting in a correlation meeting with a bunch of sales guys and everybody says, you know, what’s your goal today, Tommy? And they’re like four. That’s realistic. Then he goes to the next guy, that’s sitting next to him who hadn’t sold in weeks, who literally is broke as a joke, and all of a sudden he’s like five. You’re like, well, okay. Like, no, no, no, what’s your goal? He is like, it is five. I’ve been studying, I’ve been working hard. You and half the team will look at him and be like, okay, yeah, let’s get him in. You got this dude and give him this like awesome, like cheer.
Don’t Give Yourself A False Sense Of Dopamine
They’ll like, be like, that’s so amazing where I look at it and I go, wait a minute. Stop giving him this praise. Because you know, he’s getting this false sense of dopamine. This is the second biggest problem is we get this false sense of dopamine. Every time we share our goal with somebody and they, validate that goal, and they make you feel good for saying the goal, but the reality is you haven’t hit the goal and you never will. You haven’t promised. You haven’t committed to that goal and you haven’t done the work or even come close to doing the work, to get through the goal. So why am I getting all the validation just by saying it? We get in this fine gray line because obviously a lot of the books are like, oh, share your goal with everybody and put it on the wall. And like, sure announce it so that you can have some accountability.
Accountability Is Different Than Recognition
Accountability is different than recognition. Oftentimes in the sales world, we get this recognition or dopamine hit when we share the goal. Be very cautious about you living on a high horse. If you already hit your goal and, you know, saying I’m committed to this, please hold me accountable to this journey. And I really know that it’s gonna be a long journey. And it sounds crazy that I’m on this journey, but I, I, I want you to be aware of like, what journey I’m about to start. So, you know, I haven’t hit yet, so I wanna stay humble, but I’m committed to it. Totally different. And I watch people, you know, really get this false sense of hope. This happens a lot, especially in sales meetings. I’m like, no, please just sell one before you sell five. Let’s just get you on the board, you know? And, and sometimes you want to call those guys out.
Set Realistic Goals
The next one is, they don’t have a plan. You know, it’s like people put a goal, but they, um, you know, it, it takes like 30 seconds to put a goal. It’s like, I wanna make a hundred thousand dollars, like, well, that took you literally no thought. And it may take a full day, a week, month, sometimes a year to actually put a proper plan in business in sales and, and, and all the things, depending on how intricate your goal is. Most people don’t have the emotional bandwidth, time, commitment, or energy to actually go put the plan together. So, the low level people just set the goal and say, I’m going to do this, but there’s no actual like, power behind that punch with the plan.
Foresight And Forecast
I really like the word foresight or forecast. I’m gonna talk about foresight. The Latin definition of fore is there’s the before, right? All the things leading up to something. But, then there’s one element that means superior. So, fore also means superior. It’s the superior thinking. It’s the higher level of thinking beyond what our natural mind is probably thinking. So, how do we have this foresight and forecast properly so that we can actually plan out a goal and really make this a realistic plan instead of just a pipe dream? Now, the foresight really has to do with can we map out plan B? Do we anticipate the problems? Have we thought this out? Are we aware of all of our weaknesses and potential roadblocks? Do we know how to do this? Do we know how to leverage the team around us and resources that we have? do we anticipate future systems in different ways?
If we don’t have these things, we’re going to break ourselves as we scale and as we grow. A lot of times we don’t have the foresight. We can’t think further than three weeks ahead of ourselves, or three months, or one year. And so, we’re so limited on our planning, and we’re so limited on our ability to think farther. And that is a huge limitation where if you had a promise, you’re gonna say guns to my head, I’m gonna do whatever it takes, no matter all the different roadblocks and, and, and challenges that come along the way when we’re trying to accomplish something. Um, then forecasting is the ability to map out benchmarks and forecast like, okay, what’s the clear path to make it easy to go to work. And if we just forecast, okay, year one, year, two, year, three, year four year five, and we can actually set the stage. It makes it so much more tangible for everybody to hook their wagon to this train, because a lot of times our inability to enroll others in our, in our, in our vision and enroll others in our goals, and basically clearly define and forecast what it is we’re going to be doing.
This is one of the biggest de like roadblocks that we run into actually achieving what we want to achieve. And it’s easy to be like, oh, I have a goal to do this. But, it’s hard to forecast the timing. This is the bell curve. This is like, it’s going to suck for a year. And then all of a sudden it’s gonna shoot up because of X, Y, Z. You know, it’s that whole theory of chiseling on marble. You give a hundred hits and you don’t see anything happen. Then all of a sudden at hit hundred and one you, just all of a sudden, the marble cracks. Then you’re like, well, was it the hundred and first hit? Or was it the hundred hits that nothing happened? And then it was a hundred first, but it’s that forecasting of like, okay, it’s gonna take a hundred hits with nothing happening.
And then a hundred first, it’s probably gonna start to crack around then, and then we’re gonna actually start to be able to chip away the marble. And that’s the ability of having that foresight forecast, um, and in this goal setting exercise. Right. And so, anyway, I wanna keep this short, but I, I really do appreciate you guys supporting me on my mission. I wish I would’ve had more foresight. I knew that. And I still think a lot further, in my opinion, then a lot of people. That’s what’s helped propel me and my success. But, I still feel like I’m such a novice. I look back to when I started this, a little over three years ago and if you would’ve told me, Hey, you’re going to be doing XY Z in, in three, four years. I would’ve said you’re crazy.ย
I foresee a day where some of the big players actually play ball together. They put their resources together to actually make a change in legislation and licensing laws. I see a day where we catch the bad guys in door to door and we expose them. I see days where companies don’t get away with some of the crap that they do. And there’s a mediator that they actually have to answer to and it will hold some accountability, just like in other industries. Some people are like, no, that’ll never happen. I’m like, no, that’s my vision. My whole mission is, you know, the consulting thing funds it, the speaking, the university, and all the other stuff we do. But the reality is, my mission is to unify, up level, and bring honor and integrity to the door to door space.
