Life Puzzle Blog

Are you confident you can get your results and meet you goals?

Recently chatting with one of my clients regarding the lack of results she had in her business, and the conversation led to activity levels. Her ultimate goal was to achieve a certain status by the end of the year and when asked how confident she was of achieving her goal she said she wasn’t confident at all. Asking questions about what lead to the lack of confidence she said “the achievement my goal is too dependent on other people performing and achieving their sales targets so have no control over that”.
This statement got me thinking about how many people are running around feeling sorry for themselves, making excuses about why they can’t have what they want. Some are even pointing the finger at the people who let them down or stopped them from getting it.

In my experience, there are two kinds of people; the people who produce results and the people who have reasons and justifications for why they don’t have what they want (results). The question that I am posing to you today is: Which one are you? Do you have reasons or do you have results? Are you confident that you can get your results?
Don’t get me wrong, This is not a question of being positive all the time, it’s also NOT about being unrealistic (because sometimes life happens, your small child might be ill and needs your care or perhaps there is something that in your opinion just takes precedence over what you have committed to achieve today). The real question is… if something gets in your way, Are you prepared to ramp up your activity for the time you spent doing whatever it was that you deemed more important?
When I first started Life Puzzle (over 6 years ago) I had a situation with a client who ran up a bill for $15K worth of consulting with me and then claimed that she had no obligation to pay the bill. The bottom line was that this client had gained a great deal of value from our interaction and I had been so excited about the opportunity to deliver the project that I neglected my normal protocols of obtaining a signed agreement etc.
Long story short, I was left with a significant cash flow deficit in my business and a challenge to recoup those funds in some way within a month. The way I saw it at the time, I had two choices; 1. Complain and play the victim at how this woman had no integrity and ‘oh what a poor person I am for doing all that work and being cheated that way’(blah blah blah) or 2. Learn my lesson and take action to create a solution.
Being a person who prefers Results to Reasons I quickly set about option 2. Learn my lesson and take action to repair it and followed these steps:

1. I made a plan to generate more sales in my business. I made a list of all of the prospects, what I could do to help them and the dollar figure of the revenue of what each prospect represented. Also knowing that not all of my prospects were guaranteed to come through, I over estimated my prospect list to the total value of $30K.
2. I put the goal in my future I then used the Time Line Therapy® Creating Your Future® Process (that I use with my clients) to insert my SMART Goal into my future Time Line to achieve a minimum on $15K worth of sales by the 30th of that month, that year.
3. I started! I took action and called my prospects, I actively sought after that business. I had meetings and I closed sales and collected the money.
4. I didn’t take my foot off the accelerator: I had a goal to meet, each time I felt like I wanted to lose focus or got a little overwhelmed, I came back to my WHY…Remember that you started doing what you were doing for a good reason, something that was meaningful to you. Use this reason to help you get motivated.
5. I held myself accountable – This is the part where most people have trouble, I set out to do a certain amount of activity per day and no matter what happened I kept myself to this level (If you need help in this area, it might be time for you to engage a coach, call us to find out more)
6. Result - As it turned out by the middle of the Month I had closed $15K worth of new business and by the 30th of the Month I had completed $27,000 worth of new business.

So, what do you want? What action do you prepared to take to get it? Will you have reasons for why you didn’t get it or will you have results? Ask yourself now, what’s the next activity that you will complete towards achieving it? Most importantly, will you hold yourself accountable for achieving those results? If the situation changes, will you change too? Will you do whatever level of activity it takes to achieve those results?

As for my client, we followed the same steps and came up with a plan on how she could ensure that she achieved her goal by re-addressing her own activity, keeping herself accountable and setting a positive example to help her team stay accountable. Needless to say, the whole team are all now well on the way towards achieving that goal by the end of 2012!

If you would like to learn some of the strategies I used to create these sales click here to register for the Confident Closing Sales Training on Saturday 25th & 26th February tickets are on sale at a very special reduced rate for a limited time.

What can you see in this photo?

More importantly, what is the meaning that you will attach to this?

Last week I was having one of those days. You know those days when you have a moment of question. It doesn't happen often but occassionally you might ask yourself the question "Am I on the right track?" or "Did I do everything I could do?". In that moment of uncertainty, as I closed the door of my car and walked toward the shop I saw a small piece of paper with the word 'Confidence' written on it. The moment I saw this I realised that this was a message to remind myself to feel confident in my decision and all the uncertaintly instantly faded away.

It occurred to me that with 'confidence' in the gutter so to speak, at another time, I might have seen this and given it another meaning. Perhaps one that would have furthered the doubt or indecision. Luckily (or consciously) I chose to make it a reminder and turn my thoughts into a powerful state, one where I was in control.

The truth is that how we choose to feel and what meaning we want to attach to things is always in our control .

One thing you should always consider is how does your meaning make you feel? Are you empowered by the meaning? How can you reframe the picture?