Do your targets make you slightly nervous?
Earlier this week I evangelised about the importance of targets. And I know it makes me sound like an accountant and this is meant to be a marketing blog, but surely the whole point of marketing is that it helps you achieve your commercial goals?
I had lots of fun getting a bunch of small business owners to set commercial targets on my Marketing Planning workshop last week. And once they'd got over the shock of needing to set themselves targets, on the whole they embraced it. But what I found interesting was that once they'd finished the exercise, I asked them how many of them were slightly nervous about the targets they'd set themselves. And about three quarters of the room were nervous.
That's great! You should be nervous. If you're not nervous about your targets then how are they stretching you? If you know you can achieve them then why not set out to squeeze just a little more? So go on, make sure your targets make you just a little bit nervous. Afterall, what's the worst that can happen?
