Ready, Fire, Aim... Better Goal Targeting

Many Online Marketers are driven by competition as much as by income opportunity. In some cases, we might compete against a personal goal, sometimes against competitors (or even colleagues). There is always a number to be beat. Smashed, perhaps. When that goal is surpassed a new goal is set. Often, there are multiple goals.

As your business grows, you will be building relationships and have more exchanges with suppliers, customers, site visitors, affiliate managers, "friendly competitors", advertising reps, or colleagues.

Sooner or later some of these people will let some numbers slip out. Oops. I never forget a number. Do you?

Sometimes just one number can give you enormous insight into someone else's business... particularly if you are familiar with some of the average metrics for the niche.

One of the most effective tools to dramatically grow your business is effective goal setting. Believe it or not, some people in sales & marketing do not even set goals. There may be individual reasons for this, but one that I have heard most often is the fear of missing the goal. One possible solution could be to set a minimum goal which is within easy reach & an ideal goal which is more aggressive. To offer an opinion on this, nobody has ever suffered any harm from having high expectations of themselves. A slight miss on an aggressive goal is likely still a dramatic increase in business.

The easiest way to manage goals is to break them down in to smaller time frames. Annual goals can be overwhelming until they are broken down into quarterly, monthly, weekly, & daily goals. See this discussion on The Law of Large Numbers for some ideas on how to break a goal down to manageable & achievable numbers.

What separates top marketers from average marketers. Are they smarter? More experienced? ...or simply driven by goals.