People come to me all the time and say, “Aaron I need to improve my sales. I need to make more money!”They are certain that they need additional revenue to achieve their goals, but do you know what? Most of them don’t even know what their goals are.
They don’t know their why. In fact, their why is almost always something like “successful businesses bring in a lot of money.” Which is true! But why do they care?
If you are going to succeed in sales, and then by consequence succeed in business, you absolutely need a reason to want to succeed. You need a goal. Actually, you need several goals. If you are going to succeed you need to nail down all of the reasons you don’t want to fail. All of them. And then you need to be certain about them.
Uncertainty in your desire to achieve your own goals can only lead to negative consequences in the future. Any time you face a setback you run the risk of deciding that pushing forward is not worth the effort. You run the risk of turning your setback into a failure. It’s that certainty that is going to propel you forward when things get tough. You don’t just think you’d like to earn more money so you can send your children to a better school. You know that you want to send them to a better school. It’s one of your whys.
So how do you go about defining your whys? It’s actually easier than you think. First, separate your thoughts into two categories: big whys and little whys. Tackle them one at a time. For each category all you need to do is ask yourself the following questions:
- What do you want?
- Why are you here?
- Are you sure?
It’s that simple as long as you are honest and specific in the way you answer the questions. Don’t just say you want to pay off your mortgage. Think about when you want to pay it off. This year? In five years? What happens when you pay it off? Take enough time to clearly define your “whats” and they will lead you to your why.
One final note. It is imperative that you don’t skip that last question. It’s perhaps the toughest of the three to answer but it is the one that will drive your certainty going forward. When you come to me and you say, “Aaron I need to improve my sales. I need to make more money” and I ask you why…it’s this question that enables you to answer me without hesitation. Without uncertainty. It’s the cement behind your why.
