One of the greatest learning’s I discovered working in sales was how we were always setting sales targets and objectives, and being measured against them.

This is a good practice and keeps us focus on our sales targets.

So why not apply those same goal setting and monitoring strategies on our personal lives so that we too can stay focused on our dreams and end up where we want to be.

Today, in most organizations, management devotes enormous energy to setting work objectives and conducting performance reviews for individual employees.

Corporations go through this time-consuming and costly exercise to ensure the most favorable results for their firm.

In professions such as sales, considerable time is spent questioning, listening, discovering and understanding the needs of clients in order to provide a recommended solution or action plan.

In contrast, how much time and energy do you expend discovering your own needs and desires, and then consciously setting objectives, developing action plans with measurable performance standards, and finally reviewing your own performance?

By engaging in such an exercise, you will be doing something about your life. You will be going to work on yourself, for yourself. This is where the real behavior has to start.

Allow me to refer you to “Disciplined for Life, You are the Author of Your Future”. The exercises in Discipline 5, 6 and 7 will help you to discover your dreams, organize them into a sense of priority and help you to determine if you are prepared to pay the price to make those dreams a reality.

For the purpose of this article, and your professional sales career, I will share Discipline 8 with you. In Discipline 8 you will learn how to set goals and create a goal logbook. If you would like a copy of a goal logbook, just ask me

The process, once you learn how to use it for yourself, is the same for setting your sales and career goals. Unlike organizations who want us to do it for them, I want you to do it for you.

When you believe in your dreams, nothing but self-imposed limitations will stop you from achieving them. Your first step is to define your dreams as goals. A goal is a specific and measurable result that must be achieved within specified time, resource and cost constraints. A goal is an end, a result, and not just a task to be performed. It describes the condition we want to achieve. Our goals guide our actions and help us plan at work and at home. When we focus on our goals, long- and short-range, our present is determined by our future…not our past.

Visualize your first goal. Clearly understand your destination. Now the steps you take will all be in the right direction. You can examine each part of your life in the context of what really matters to you. Your goals are an extension of your values.

Goal setting is the process you use to select, define and put into operation the expectations that you have for yourself. It all starts with you!