Goals and Complacency


by charen smith - Date: 2008-11-12 - Word Count: 481 Share This!


I'd say that one of the greatest threats to a business is complacency. In the world of marketing you just need to stay active, constantly seek out that next customer while being sure to keep your current customers happy. If you start to falter even briefly you might find people quickly venturing to a different store than yours.

For any store no matter how big or small complacency can be a serious concern. Typically goal setting is used to counteract complacent behavior. If you're always working towards a goal than you can be certain that you aren't going to slow down, but this is only true if you set the right kinds of goals.

Okay, say you primarily market through catalogs, and so this is where most of your goals are going to be set.

Now, you decide to set an overreaching goal that will probably never be able to be accomplished. You say you want your print catalogs to be on the coffee table in every single home period.

This is about as grand of a goal as any company can set, and I'm not against very large goals, but are you also creating some smaller, everyday goals as well?

A goal like this isn't something that's necessarily going to create a lot of strong motivation because it's just too large to really grasp. Sure, it sounds great, but how exactly are you going to accomplish it? To appeal to every single person you would need multiple different print catalogs for people to choose from selling such a massive range of products it probably just wouldn't be possible.

Furthermore, the goal is so huge it's hard to grasp each individual step that could even possibly lead to it. The goal might be there, but complacency could still set in because the goal is too large to properly motivate.

Why not instead have a goal of adding a hundred extra people to your mailing list. Once you've done that than add another two hundred, and so on. Or maybe have the goal of increasing the amount of sales you get from each catalog by a certain amount each month. Stick to small, more easily attainable goals that keep leading to the next, slightly larger goal.

Now you're building upon each success while still maintaining a goal oriented approach by always having another goal lined up.

I know I always get a bit of a thrill each time I accomplish one of my goals, and you want to be sure you can receive this same kind of feeling. It helps encourage me to move onto the next goal and prove I can accomplish that, too. If the goal is so huge I'll probably never be able to accomplish it, and this is the only goal I have, I'll never get that motivation.

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