Why You Should Set Account Goals
Its time to give yourself an 'A'
The first question that has to be answered is ‘is goal setting important? According to a Dominican University study, those who write goals accomplish significantly more than those who do not write their goals.
No matter whether it's personal or professional, goals provide direction, motivate people, improve focus, encourage innovation, and provide opportunities to learn and grow. But what does it mean to have goals when it comes to Account Planning? Think about it as defining the end state. It’s less about what we want to achieve and more about what it looks like if we have already achieved it. This approach to account goal-setting can transform behaviour, attitude, and actions towards the discipline of planning as well as execution of the plan.
Give Yourself an ‘A’:
If you have seen the movie Dangerous Minds with Michelle Pheifer, you will know she plays the role of an English school teacher in a rough neighbourhood. She is given a class of youngsters who are more interested in parties, gangs, and crime than they are in learning. How does she redirect their behaviour? How does she get them to think differently about themselves, their lives, and their learning? She gives them an A right out of the gate. For the first time, these youngsters got a taste, a view of success, what it felt like to be an A student and accomplish something they had never thought possible. And so, the change began. It's time to give yourself an A. Give yourself a fighting chance to grow your accounts to their full potential.
Challenge your Status Quo:
Your account goals define your purpose for being in the account. Why are you there? We know you're there to generate growth and revenue for your own company. We understand that this is a given. But your purpose goes beyond that.
Account goals define a new way to reach new levels of achievement within the account. Giving yourself an ‘A’ and then aiming to keep it will challenge you and your colleagues to aim higher, do things you might never have before, and create an ‘art of the possible’ mindset rather than a ‘wait and see’ mindset.
Hyperfocus on the ‘A’:
With the bullseye clearly in sight, you can aim and prioritize your selling efforts in the right direction, helping you to keep everyone focused on the end game and ensure everyone aligns themselves and prioritizes their task to maximize every opportunity to achieve the A.
Setting account goals has never been more important. With contracting markets, internal pressures, and less time available, what you focus on and where you spend your time have never been more important than it is right now. Don’t go another day without setting or reviewing your account goals. If you want to build world-class goals into your account planning cadence, talk to us today!
I’m sure we have all heard the word goal before unless you have been living under a rock, but what does the word really mean in relation to account planning?
I like to define it as the end state. It is not a statement of what we want to achieve but rather something we have already achieved. Then you work backwards from there by figuring out which effort and work needs to be directed.
So why set account goals?
Your account goals, they define your purpose for being in the account. Why are you there? I know that we know that you're there to generate growth and revenue for your own company. We understand that, that is a given. But your purpose goes beyond that. So your goals should be defining your purpose for being in the account. Your goals should also be defining the way to reach new levels of achievement within the account.
Goals also help keep the account team focused on that end game, on that end state. And therefore goals ensure that people align themselves and prioritize their tasks, including yourself, and therefore enable better or more effective use of time and resources.
Setting account goals has never been more important. With contracting markets, internal pressures, and less time available, what you focus on and where you spend your time have never been more important than it is right now.
Don’t go another day without setting or reviewing your account goals. If you want to build world-class goals into your account planning cadence, talk to us today!
