Why you should monitor your goals on a monthly basis

The question is an excellent one. Accountability is critical. My father would ask me: Do you prefer the pain of discipline or the pain of regret? 

Keeping a laser-like focus on one’s goals needs to become second nature. Developing accountability requires a balance of how often one looks at the scoreboard and how one responds. Personally, I prefer to monitor my goals on a monthly basis. I take my annual objective and break it into a monthly target, then monitor performance against that target. Some prefer quarterly monitoring, but experience has taught me that less frequent monitoring provides insufficient attention to the goal and weekly monitoring creates too much of an obsession with the target. Goal diffusion can occur if focusing too infrequently, and, if over-monitoring, I have a tendency to develop severe commission breath. One can never want the sale more than the prospect does. Nothing can kill a deal faster.

In addition, I keep a running tally of both sales made and my activity pipeline. Striking the right balance between new business development and closed sales is always important. I realized long ago that my closing ratio was a direct function of plate appearances.  Never let your activity dry up to the extent that you are not maintaining your target number of weekly appointments. (My number is ten.)