How to Set, Track and Smash Goals

THE CHALLENGE

“I want to earn more money and expand my business but I don’t know how and am unsure I can” 

Do you know how much you earned last month? What about the last quarter? Could you easily share with me your sales figures for 2021? 

What are your sales goals for quarter 1 of next year? How much do you want to earn in 2022? How are you going to earn that? 

These are all powerful questions. How you answer these questions will highlight the amount of clarity you have in your business. The more clarity you have in your business, the more awareness and the more likely you are to turn your dreams into a reality. 

It is my passion to help women make money doing what they love, in a way that they love. 

The women I coach all face their own unique challenges, but, there are many patterns and common themes; one of them is their financial awareness & confidence – or lack thereof. 

Here, I am going to share with you a story of how implementing some simple yet highly effective tools for my client helped her to go from only thinking she could make £20 – £25k in 2021 to setting a goal for £35k to smashing through that ceiling and being well on her way to earning £40k. 

Oh and she’s set her sights on £60k for 2022 (and is totally going to achieve it). 

Here’s what we did  – and what you could do too; 

In short:

Step 1; do the transformational mindset work and gain clarity

Step 2; get clear on HOW you will reach your targets

Step 3; get to work and create your clients

Step 4; use some snazzy tracking tools

FYI, I’m giving you access to these snazzy goal tracking tools – so make sure you read (or at least scroll!) to the bottom!

Step 1; Transformational mindset work and clarity

The first step was a combination of transformational mindset work and gaining clarity. My client was just over a year into business and she was doing great. But, she wanted to do better. 

So we had to determine what this meant to her. How much better did she want to do? What exactly did she want to create? What was it that she was actually aiming for? 

Vague goals get vague results – it was time to get specific. 

At this point, I asked her what she wanted to earn in 2021. And by ‘earn’ I meant the total amount of sales she wanted to make. 

(From this figure, you can then gain clarity on how much you want to pay yourself. Lots of women I coach miss this step out! If you’re curious about how much to pay yourself and how to get to grips with your operating expenses – send me an email and we can chat. I’ll also be writing a blog on this in January)

She rather timidly shared that maybe, she could possibly earn about £20-£25k across the year. 

It was at this point that the transformational mindset work was needed. 

My amazing, talented client was playing small. She was being safe. She didn’t believe in the possibility of her earning more. And at that point, if I had let her settle on the figure of £25k, I can with absolute confidence tell you that she would have earned that amount. 

If you draw a circle to be a certain size, you will fill that circle. If you don’t believe you can be bigger, you will not be bigger. You will be the size that your beliefs dictate. 

Any of this resonating with you? 

With some gentle yet firm coaching, I helped my client to expand her horizons. I helped her to see that she was good enough to earn more. She was worthy. She was capable. I helped her to believe she could be bigger. In that moment I witnessed her shift, I witnessed her literally creating new beliefs. 

Her whole demeanour changed, she sat upright, her eyes were bright – it was so exciting! She settled on £35k and made the decision that this was what she wanted to earn in 2021. 

Some people may compare the number £25k with £35k and think it’s not that much of a jump. But I’m in the business of creating sustainable change and achievable goals. There is a fine line between expanding your horizons and setting unachievable goals. If you set goals that are too high and unrealistic, when you inevitably then don’t hit them, it’s a huge confidence hit and it sets you back many paces. 

Bear this in mind!

Step 2; Get clear on HOW you will reach your targets

Once my client had decided on her target for the year and truly believed that she was capable of earning it, we needed to figure out exactly how she was going to earn it. We looked at the products and services she was offering and did the maths i.e how much of X service would she need to sell in order to achieve her goal. As she had a range of services, we looked at a few different combinations for her to hit that £35k target.

What we quickly saw was that with her services at their current prices, there weren’t enough hours in the day for her to be able to deliver the volume of services it would take to reach her target.   

So what happened next? 

You guessed it, we increased her prices. 

Cue some more transformational work – my client was on a roll though, so her new belief system held strong 💪🏼

We increased the prices of her programmes, plus we refined the offerings to increase the quality of her service. My client had gained over a year of experience since she had set the prices, she had great feedback, proven results and she had invested in her own development – she was ready to step it up. 

By the way, do you think if my client had stuck with her goal of hitting £25k that she would have bothered to increase her prices? Nope! She would have carried on with the same prices because there was no reason to increase them. This is the power of playing bigger/ not playing small. 

Step 3; Creating clients

Once my client knew what she needed to do to hit her annual target, we broke it down into quarters.

To earn £35k over the year, she needed to earn £8,750 every quarter. This would require sending out proposals to the value of £8,750 – at the VERY least. Of course, the ideal scenario would be to send out proposals to the value of around £12k per quarter to allow for some rejections. 

This is a bit of simple maths – if you have a target to earn X amount in a quarter, you have to be sending out enough proposals/ selling enough of your product to hit that target!

I specifically advocate for my clients to use quarterly targets rather than monthly targets to reduce the pressure on themselves. Using quarterly targets allows you to schedule holidays and if you’re having a bad couple of weeks, you still have time to make it up over the rest of the quarter which helps you to cope with the realities of the ups and downs of business (and the unpredictabilities of life!). 

At this point, we had an awesome brainstorming session on the specific ACTION she needed to take on a weekly basis to create, attract and convert these clients.

Step 4; Use some snazzy tracking tools

From a financial awareness perspective, the final piece of the puzzle was to help my client maintain this new habit with some snazzy tools, two in particular: Goal tracker and Financial Goal Tracker. There is a huge amount of power in tracking. Goal tracking creates awareness in your business, which as I’ve already shared above, is very important. 

Spoiler alert – I’m sharing these goal trackers with you! Scroll down to access these gifts 🙂

Tool number 1; the financial tracker

First of all, my awesome team created a financial tracking tool for my client. Here, she could track her sales opportunities and track the conversions. She was able to see how many proposals she had sent out and to what value. She was also able to track how many of them converted and she was, therefore, able to see how she was tracking against her quarterly goals. 

Tool number 2; the goal tracker

Along with her financial tracking tool, we created a quarterly goal tracking tool for my client too. As mentioned in step 3, my client had to take lots of actions to actually create and attract the clients so keeping on top of these was imperative. 

Then, on a monthly and quarterly basis, my client and I reviewed these spreadsheets and ensured she was on track. I supported her with accountability and continued to brainstorm with her creative ways of making money in a way that she loved. 

The real beauty of it was that as my client proved to herself that she was able to hit these targets, she grew in confidence and self-belief which ultimately helped her to exceed the target and be well on her way to earning £40k in 2021. 

Now, my client is looking ahead to 2022 with excitement and new goals. She has set her sights on hitting £60k and we are discussing adding new income streams to her suite of services to help her to do this. 

Now it’s your turn!

FREE GOAL TRACKERS

I am so excited to share these tools with you:

Quarterly Business and Financial Goal Trackers

Please note the financial goal tracker tool is designed for service-based businesses**** 

I hope that this story inspires you in your own business. If you would like some 1:1 support in implementing these new tools, book a discovery call with Sophie today. 

What are your biggest takeaways from this blog? What action are you going to take? 

JOIN ME!!

Join my Quarterly Vision and Goals workshop where an intimate group of female solopreneurs come together to gain clarity, play bigger and create plans to reach their goals. Sound good?  FIND OUT MORE