You're in business for a reason. Probably a number of reasons. Because of those reasons, you set yourself a number of goals. And then you evaluate your performance against those goals.

So, let's choose a simple goal - I want to make £5000 per month.

My goal, each month, is to invoice £5000.

That's nice and easy, right?

Actually, that's a crap goal. Because you're actually looking at a result, not an action.

If you get to the end of the month and you find you've only invoiced £3000, what are you going to do? You're quite a long way short, but you don't have a plan of action.

Instead, if you set your goals as actions, not results, you've given yourself a roadmap to hit that goal.

My goal is to have 10 meetings per month

It might be that your conversion rate is 20%. And your average sale is £2500. So actually, 10 meetings will result in 2 sales, which will bring in £5000.

But if you find you're short of your goal, say you've only hit 7 meetings this month, you've got a plan of action.

I don't necessarily know how to conjure up the extra £2000 in the first example. But I do know how to get 3 extra meetings - just pick up the phone and get calling.

Take action: Give yourself the chance to hit your goals - base them on actions, not results.