Quit Making Resolutions – Start Setting Goals

December 31st  – the day for making resolutions!

So, what’s yours? That’s the question that everyone is going to be asking you over the next few days. Do you have an answer? You better believe that we here at Wedding Industry Rescue do!

I say out the door with resolutions and in with goal setting! The dictionary gives the definition of a resolution as “A firm decision to do or not to do something” and the definition of a goal as “the result or achievement toward which effort is directed”. It’s not an accident that I highlighted and underlined the word effort because I think that is what truly separates a resolution from a goal. It’s not enough to decide to do something different this year. You have to take action by developing a reasonable plan to achieve the desired change.

Let’s say that your resolution is to make more money this year. You’ll need to ask yourself: Well how much is more?  Do you even know how much you made last year? How will you know if your resolution even occurs?

You can’t just resolve to make more money. You need to set an actual goal, consisting of dollars and events (or however you track your $) and you set out to make it happen.  It’s actually pretty easy to do. First you determine how much money you want to make this year. Write it down! Second, you divide that number by the amount of your average sale to see how many events you need to book this year to reach your $ sales goal. Write it down! Now that you have your dollar and events goals, you can easily divide each by 12 (the number of months this year) and come up with a more workable and achievable goal.

Important Tip: I write my yearly and monthly goals on a marker board in my home office so I can easily see them at all times when I’m working. It’s a great motivator and I highly recommend it. It also helps me track my performance toward reaching my goals and serves as a kick in the butt if I need it. If you can’t easily see your goals on a daily basis then they will disappear – I promise!
 
Example: If you are a photographer and you want to earn $100,000 (gross) this year and your average sale of services to each client is $3,200, then you would:

1.)    Write down $100,000 as your $ goal
a.       $8,333.00 per month
2.)    Write down 32 as your # of events goal
a.       2.66 (3) events per month

See. Doesn’t 3 events per month sound more achievable than “I have to book 32 events this year”?

Obviously we can go much deeper into your sales goals by figuring out overall average gross and profit per event and a hundred other things, like how to squeeze more profit out of each event and creating larger packages to sell to your current clients. But this is the most basic and manageable way to get you started. You can do this – so do it! Don’t resolve it, goal it!
 
Need help with goal setting? Contact us for help today.