The concept of target setting excites the blood of winners and achievers at the same time, it horrifies anyone who either lacks ambition or cannot take pressure – A word regarding the latter – if we didn’t have pressure, we wouldn’t have diamonds.

There are many things in life over which we have no control however; achieving goals is not one of them. In fact we are setting and achieving goals almost daily and have done so from the moment we learned to negotiate for the things we wanted. The more we want, the harder we work to get it.

A good example of setting and achieving goals is a young lady whom I worked with. She had been on the ships for a number of years before she came and worked in one of my salons. While on the ships she became very good friends with a girl who ended up living in Canada. For a while the young lady wanted to visit Canada to see her friend but was always put off by the costs. During a performance review she told me of her goal – to visit her friend in Canada so we created a goal plan.

To remind her of her goal she created a ‘dream board’ in her section. On the dream board were pictures of Canada as well as pictures of her and her friend. Secondly we created ambitious targets split between services and retail. Thirdly she opened a separate bank account for her Canada trip into which she placed all her retail commission together with services commission in excess of her monthly needs. One year later she spent an unforgettable holiday in Canada. She set and committed herself to this goal, reminded herself every day of the end game and achieved monthly targets for both services and retail.

She achieved her goal because she really, really wanted to.

Don’t think of targets in just monetary terms but rather as a series of strategies that will insure achievement of goals is on going.

For example, have a new client strategy. Retaining your existing clients will ensure a constant income but growth comes from getting new clients of which referrals are the most reliable.

Upgrade chemical clients to include a treatment. Very few (if any) operations are performed without an aesthetic and antibiotics to protect patients. We should be offering the same protection to our chemical clients.

Introduce another product or service. Your clients are shoppers and will respond to any offer made to them particularly if recommended by someone they see as an expert.

Pre-book the next appointment before the client leaves the salon. When done effectively your clients will visit your salon at least one more time a year and, just doing this, could grow your turnover by 15%.

These strategies will help to achieve monthly turnover goals. Using the My Salon Software target function gives you daily updates on whether you are going to achieve or even exceed your target. For example, if you set yourself a target of R50,000.00 for a working month of 25 days your daily target will be R2,000.00. If you do more than that on any day the system revises your daily target by dividing the balance of your target by 24 days (one day less). And so on. The system also calculates your estimated turnover if you over-achieve consistently on your daily target. There is nothing more motivating than to see the reward growing with your effort.

Simply put, by failing to set goals (planning) you are unconsciously planning to fail. Add to this business’s magic ingredient, a positive mental attitude, and any goal becomes achievable.

And the final thing on setting and achieving goals – whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re probably right!