I was kicking off with a client at an annual planning retreat and I had just asked him what his revenue goal was. He shared the number, which was about 20% higher than the past few record sales years his organization has posted. He had barely gotten the number out of his mouth before he added, “…But that’s crazy talk.”
“Why?” I asked
He went on to explain to me how the organization had grown and scaled over the last few years and to expect that to continue wasn’t reasonable.
“Says who?” I inquired.
The obvious answer was according to him.
In the first quarter, this organization’s sales were equal to that crazy number. Their sales last month were well above what it would take to achieve that crazy number.
So what happened?
It’s actually a really simple answer: we broke that “crazy” number down into quarterly and monthly goals. Then we figured out what the organization’s closing percentage was and figured out how much proposed revenue they needed. Then, each day they worked on how many proposals they needed to get out to hit this target. Each day they stepped up to the plate and made those proposals. As the proposals went out, the business came in.
My own coach has been known to say that “the results we are getting are always perfectly suited to the systems we are running.” If a goal looks daunting, it’s likely that we will need to improve some processes, leave some things behind, and create some new disciplines in order to achieve it. The title of Marshall Goldsmith’s book seems appropriate here: What Got You Here Won’t Get You There. It shouldn’t be surprising that growth can seem daunting when we view it in light of our current situation. We are using our existing systems to consider different results. In order to realize those results, we must change and grow.
Speaking of results, it’s important to identify that one of the consistent patterns that I see in leaders that prevent them from achieving what they want is attachment to outcomes. What do I mean by that? Consider a client I started working with earlier this year. He had achieved extraordinary results before he started working with me. They had come fairly quick, but as of late, he felt like he was on a plateau. He hired me to help grow his income. In order to do that, however, we started with his thinking. He was so attached to the results that came from each and every action that he was taking. That type of hyperfocus and rumination was causing him to show up in a way that was needy, as if he was desperate for a sale to come from every interaction. The irony of it all, he was making more money than he ever had. This is what attachment to outcomes looks like. It’s about showing up in a way that is more focused with the result than the process. When we lose sight of the process and become focused on the outcomes, we often stagnate or get worse. When we focus on the process, we get better results than we could ask for or imagine.
Allow me another story to illustrate how this shows up. I had another client who has been in business for about seven years. He is a phenomenal guy, great listener, and stagnated sales guy. In my conversations with him he would often share with me the math that it took for him to be able to achieve his desired salary. The only issue was that he could do the math but wasn’t creating the results. We started looking at his daily systems, his support structure, and his sales processes. He previously had an assistant who he let go when his revenue had dropped. When we did an analysis of his best 12 income months, however, we discovered that they were when he had the support of an assistant. We also had identified that he stopped pursuing a particular revenue stream entirely. While it wasn’t high margin, it was a great way to get a client into his ecosystem after which he could introduce other products to them. This had resulted in a significant dip in his revenue. You can see how these systems are related. Recently, he rehired an assistant, began pursuing that revenue stream, and had made some other small tweaks and is on pace for a revenue record, as well as on his way to the projections that he had created for himself.
One of the first questions that I always ask individuals who are interested in working with me is, “What does success look like?” It never ceases to amaze me how many people are stopped in their tracks by that question. The default setting of many lives is responsive. As a result of that, we define what can and cannot be done by our circumstances rather than our desires. That’s what led my client to identify his goal as “crazy talk.” Things outside of his control caused him to draw that conclusion. He, like many of us, would settle for less because of reasonableness, fear, or a lack of intentionality. He made a different choice, however. It’s a scarier one at the outset, but it’s a better one. It dares to ask big questions. Moreso, it’s brave enough to answer the questions and accept them without dismissing them. Making that choice is hard enough, but then there is the real payoff moment which is when we turn a choice into action. We take the risks to reap the rewards.
I’m wondering, what’s on the other side of your crazy talk?