An Effective Written Plan: Component II
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The Three Components of an Effective Written Plan
Number Two: Break Down your Plan into Accomplishable Steps
When formulating an action plan to, make the first steps of the plan the easiest to accomplish. There are two reasons for this:
1. If you make the first steps of your plan easy to accomplish, you'll have no excuse not to do it. You know that famous expression: "The toughest step of any journey is the first step." Well, if the first step is the toughest to take, why do so many people insist on making it the hardest one to accomplish? Why not make it the easiest one to accomplish?
2. By making the first steps of the plan easy to accomplish you're more likely to take them. Since they were so easy to accomplish, you're very likely to do it successfully, thereby building your confidence in your ability to accomplish your goal. In addition, by taking those steps, accomplishing them and building your confidence, you'll be so excited that this will give you the incentive to keep going. Because you know as long as you keep going, you can't fail.
Once you have started to build your confidence and develop the habit of accomplishment, it is time to increase the difficulty of the steps, a little bit at a time. Remember, you never want to make a task so hard for yourself that it becomes distasteful. That is when boredom and frustration set in, which eventually leads to giving up. Let me give you an example:
Let's say Salesperson A has tracked her numbers and realized that in order to meet her sales goals she needs to make 100 prospecting calls a week (or 20 a day). She currently makes about 15 a week (or 3 day). Do you think she can go to 100 calls a week successfully starting the next week?
This would be highly unlikely, considering she's nowhere near used to doing it. Plus, an extra 85 prospecting calls a week would probably bring her an extra 80 instances of rejection. Not something any salesperson could easily swallow if they were not used to it. But how about this plan:
Instead of going from 3 calls a day directly to 20, do you think Salesperson A could go from 3 to 4? Of course she could. Now this might not seem like much, but going from 3 prospecting calls a day to 4 increases your prospecting effort by 33% and could very likely do the same thing to your sales.
Salesperson A needs to make those 4 calls every single day for a month. Once she's developed the habit of 4 a day it's time to increase to 5. Do that every day for a month and then go to 6 and keep going until eventually, Salesperson A gets to 20 calls a day. Now she's doing it at her speed and is able to ease into the routine and develop a habit of confidence and accomplishment because she broke her goal down into accomplishable steps.
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Warren Greshes
in Goal-Setting, Long-Term Planning, Personal Motivation, Preparation, Time Management
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Warren Greshes
in Goal-Setting, Long-Term Planning, Personal Motivation, Preparation, Time Management
|
Post a Comment
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