GOAL SETTING AND ACTION PLANS

GOAL SETTING AND ACTION PLANS
By Pete Zdanis

I spend a lot of time working with new people in my group helping them develop their goals and action plans for their Usana business.

I always ask them to make the initial effort to put their goals and plans in writing, and then share them with me for review and suggestions. The main reason I do this is because, unless they develop their goals themselves, they will never take ownership of them and will likely not take the necessary actions to reach the goals.

What I usually discover in the first draft I receive from new distributors is one of two extremes:

o Very general and vague - "I want to earn $1,000.00 per week in Usana."

o Extremely detailed and mind-numbing "business plans" which would require a Harvard MBA to understand.

The first example is far too general, and doesn't provide any detail on what must be done to achieve the goal. At the end of every day, there would be no way to measure if you made any progress toward your goal.

The second example is far too detailed, and usually overwhelms people and causes "paralysis by analysis". It would be impractical to review an elaborate business plan daily to measure progress.

What's the solution?:

Start with one or two high level goals with a specific target date, and then "work backward" to develop more specific action plans to achieve the goal(s).

For example:

Primary Goal:

"Become a Gold Director in 12 months."

Good. That's a specific goal with a defined time frame.

Now, let's break that down into smaller, manageable actions steps that are needed to achieve the goal.

For example, we know that the average Gold Director has personally sponsored 30 to 40 new Distributors.


So, let's define an action step, or secondary goal, to reach the primary goal:

"Personally sponsor three new Distributors per month".

OK. That will certainly get us to our primary goal, but - How do we sponsor three new Distributors per month?

Well, let's break it down into even smaller steps................

There are many, many different ways and methods to sponsor new distributors - warm market, classified ads, purchased leads, etc., etc. The various methods, combined with the individual Distributor's belief, confidence and experience level, make it difficult to determine specifically, at least initially, how many presentations a particular Distributor would have to make to sponsor one new Distributor

For the sake of this exercise, let simply, assume that they would sponsor one out of every ten people they make a presentation to. Note: By "presentation", I am referring to an H&F Meeting, a one-on-one H&F Presentation in person, an information pack sent by snail mail or e-mail, or a telephone presentation using the H&F Presentation, Fast Facts, etc. Therefore, we would need to make thirty presentations in one month in order to sponsor three new Distributors in a month.

So, our next level goal or action step would be:

"Make 30 presentations per month."

OK - Hang in there, we're almost done.............

Not everyone we talk to is interested in learning more about becoming involved in Usana. So, we're obviously going to need to contact more than 30 people in order to schedule 30 presentations. Again, the ratio of contacts to presentations varies widely based on many variables, similar to those listed above. But, for the sake of example, let's assume that half of the people we contact would be interested in learning more about Usana, i.e., would be willing to view / attend / listen to a presentation.

So, our next level goal or action step would be:

"Make 60 contacts per month." (Or an average of two per day)

NOW we have something to grab on to. We now know that, in order to become a Gold Director in one year, (Primary Goal) you would need to make an average of two contacts per day (Single Daily Action Plan – SDA).

Now, at the end of every day, you can look back at your activities for the day, ask yourself if you took needed action to reach your primary goal, provide an answer, and rate yourself:

o Zero Contacts - "F" - failed for the day.

o One Contact - "C" - did okay, but need to do better tomorrow.

o Two Contacts - "A" - achieved my goal, and am on track to reach my primary goal.

o More than two Contacts - "A+" - I may reach my primary goal faster than my target date.

CAUTION: Don't get all hung up about the numbers in the above examples. They are simply that - examples. As you gain in experience and knowledge, you may find that more than half of the people you contact would be willing to learn more about Usana, and that more than 10% of the presentations you make will result in a signup. In fact, I KNOW that will be the case.

Best of success!

Pete Zdanis