If you’ve been following my Rainmaking blogs in the last few weeks, you know that we’ve talked about identifying your target market, determining active and passive strategies for reaching out to that target market, and follow up strategies. We’ve talked about following up and saying “thank you”. And recently we featured a topic on the importance of setting SMART goals.
Goal-setting is so important! And writing those goals down is imperative. There are statistics upon statistics that will tell you the hugely increased likelihood of achieving your goals if you write them down. The other important part – after writing down the goals, is to revisit them periodically. How often is that? I recommend looking at your big goals at least once per month. And if you can’t commit to that, at least once per quarter. But your tasks to complete those annual goals (i.e.; the action items that you will commit to) should be reviewed much more frequently. I recommend to review them several times per month. Yes – this is where the commitment comes in. Rainmaking doesn’t happen overnight. It happens by building relationships and nurturing those relationships over time. In order to nurture a relationship, you must continue to connect with people on a regular basis.
Step 1: Goals as Swim Lanes
In my Rainmaking program, I refer to the annual goal setting process as developing your swimlanes for the year. What’s a swimlane? It’s simply a visual term to denote a spreadsheet, with goals down the left hand column and quarters listed across the top. Each quarter is a “lap” in your annual goal process.
The top item in your left hand column might read something like this:
Generate $250K in new revenue from product line X. (This is the “WHAT?”)
Then your swimlane headers for each quarter, related to that item might be:
Q1: Generate $50K Q2: Generate $50K Q3: Generate $75K Q4: Generate $75K
- Achieve 150 new “likes” on Facebook in 2016 (This is one of the “HOWs?”)
Q1: Post 5 newsworthy articles on FB; request friends to “like” my page; achieve 30 new likes
Q2: Post 6 newsworthy articles on FB; request friends to “like” my page; achieve 40 new likes
I believe that there should be some “brain-dumping” in developing your first set of swimlanes. Imagine a SMART goal for your revenue next year. And put that at the top, where you can see it every time you look at the sheet. Then throw out several ideas for yourself as to what kind of activities would help get you there. Will you do more social media (passive strategy), or more technical presentations (active strategy)? How many existing clients will you meet with every month? How many prospects will you meet with every month? Put it all out there and then step back to re-evaluate and hone the specifics down to realistic tasks.
Step 2: Tracking Touches
Once you finalize your swimlanes and set large goals with monthly milestones (I call them “touches”), then you need to track them. You said you’d meet with 5 clients during January. OK – get those meetings scheduled. Start filling the calendar. You said you’d go to more networking meetings. OK – sign up for the next one (making sure your target client profile people will be there too!) and put it on your calendar. Filling the calendar for next month can be both empowering and scary. Empowering because you can begin to see potential progress. Scary because when the calendar fills up, you have less time for other things and/or you need to juggle things. Get out of your comfort zone and vote for empowering! Not all of those meetings you put in your calendar will generate revenue. But some will. And then you’ll track it and feel even more empowered to set up that next meeting. Trust me on this! And give it time. Rainmaking builds on itself!
Ready to start? Contact me for some working copies of swimlane sheets and Touch Trackers! Or,better yet, check out our upcoming webinar series on “Jumpstart your Rainmaking” where we’ll work through them together. There’s no time like the present to get going on 2016! I hope to see you there!
