It has been a long and very productive week so I thought after dropping my daughter off at school I would treat myself and go to they gym, to be fair I can think of better treats but they were shut!
Well the first machine was fine, and an easy exercise to start with, but once I started the cycling the whole session became a real struggle. Now don’t get me wrong I was not training for the triathlon nor was my goal of 20 minutes (ok 12) unreasonable, simply I was starting to flag. Then my gremlins (creatures who constantly sit on my shoulder, we all have them) kicked in – whispering encouraging words of failure in my ear: “stop now, no one will know’, ‘the target was unreasonable, ‘you have lots on at home’, ‘you need a rest’. On and on they went, talking me our of working towards my goal. I have to confess I nearly gave up after 10 minutes, 2 minutes short of my goal.
What kept me going was simple, I started thinking of the positivity developed on my Proactive Calling – Energiser programme this week and the conversations about ignoring your gremlins and focusing on results not activity. Armed with this renewed positive mindset and much to the disgust of my gremlins I covered over the timer and focused on the end result, yay I did it so now I need a reward!
The week’s training was all about being proactive, sales planning, making results focused calls, with a live calling, recording and analysis session on the second day. The team came up with amazing actions and results to take into the business, not just because the training was great (which it was), but because they set themselves clear goals, a day’s worth of challenges and just went for it. I did have to pull some of them back when their gremlins started talking to them but once they put their mind to it, the results came flowing in.
Interestingly one of the team came out of their calling room after 1 hour and said ‘that’s my time up’! we had a short chat about whether or not he had achieved his challenges, which he hadn’t, as well as the importance of productivity not activity and avoiding mediocrity. Long story short he went back in, fully re-energised and focused to make his goals work for him and more importantly at the end of the day he was the most successful caller.
So what is the learning here, for me it is simple:
- Stop listening to gremlins
- Any goal set must be challenging, specific and achievable
- It is the results that matter not the activity
- Challenges must be realistic and measured
- Reward must be based on goal achievement not mediocrity
- People must see a reward for their success
- Where people are struggling support, encouragement and guidance must be offered
- Any sales environment must encourage people to succeed
- People must take accountability for their goals and results
- Optimistic attitude drives accountable behaviour
- Accountable behaviour drives results
To know more about how goal setting and productive attitude can drive business results, check out the Acet People: Building Influential Relationships and Proactive Calling – Energiser training programmes http://www.acetpeople.co.uk/recruitment-training-courses/
