Walk Like a Giant, Sell Like a Madman

2.4. Breaking Down Your Goal into Milestones

Challenging goals can often seem overwhelming. When I set a goal to sell 300 homes in a year, it seemed a little unrealistic until I broke it down. To sell 300 homes in a single year, I would need to sell about 25 homes per month or 6 per week. That was still a little overwhelming, so I started breaking it down even more. I could sell 4 FSBOs (For Sale By Owner properties) per month, 6 expired listings, and 8 foreclosures. That was 18, meaning I would need to secure only 7 more traditional listings per month. That seemed doable.

When I began drawing up my plans for increasing sales, my goal became even more realistic. I figured that I could significantly cut down on the time I spent showing homes by driving three or four couples around at once rather than one couple at a time. I also hired assistants to answer the phones and process the transactions.I broke my goal into milestones and then I broke up my workload by inventing new ways of doing things and then delegating the work.

Suppose your goal is to sell 240 cars this year. If you look at it that way, it sounds like a monumental task. So break it down to just 20 per month. That sounds a little easier, but it's still somewhat daunting. So let's break it down further to one car per day if you work a fiveday week. One car per day doesn't seem too difficult, but take it a step further. How many prospects do you have to approach to sell one car? For the sake of this example, let's say ...