The Gap Between Targets and Results

When a sales or marketing strategy fails to produce the results your company or team had hoped to see, the normal response is to change the strategy and try something different.

But what if that’s the wrong approach? What if it’s not the strategy that’s misfiring, but something else. Maybe it’s the team.

What if there were another approach that would make the investment in the current strategy pay off and achieve the results you had expected. And maybe even more than you had hoped for?

There is, but it’s not a logical or simple solution. But it is one that is guaranteed to improve performance and results. Because if you believed in the strategy you embarked upon, then there had to be some merit in it. 

So what’s wrong? Why is there a big gap between the company vision or targets, and the results you are getting? The problem is what I call the Knowing-Doing Gap. You know what you want to do and achieve, and have a strategy to get there, but the result did not materialise. The reason invariably is in the Doing, not the Knowing.

That is, the activity of the team did not live up to the ideas, outline, plan and expectations. That may be an obvious conclusion, but if you do not know WHY the team did not do what it knew how to do, then the problem is likely to be a recurring one.

The solution is to identify what is stopping the team carrying out the plan; doing what they have to do to get the results the strategy promised.

Implementation. Actually doing what we planned and said we would do. It’s one of the biggest shortcomings of people. We try, and will give honest effort, but still come up short. And the reason is a below-par mental mindset more often than a lack of understanding, talent or skill.

What stops people doing what they know how to do and say they can do is subconscious mental programming. It’s always the reason for a Knowing-Doing Gap - the reason people do not do what they know how to do, or don’t do as well as they should be able to do and are trained to do.

Improved Results

Imagine what enormous improvement in results and increase in productivity and revenue that could be achieved if people did exactly what they knew how to do and were trained and instructed to do. If you could instruct your team to double sales this month and they went ahead and achieved it - what would that do for the bottom line?

Truth is, that is quite possible. People are able to do far more than they actually do. Their potential for accomplishing tasks is far greater than their productivity. What slows them down or stops them for hitting their goals isn’t a lack of talent, it’s a lack of application caused by paradigms of mental programming. It’s a subconscious set of limiting beliefs that form people’s habits and make them work in a particular way. 

What people believe will always cause them to perform in a habitual manner no matter what they are told, or even what they declare they will do. You see, fixed habits cause behavior, and it’s behavior that leads to results. And if habits are created by faulty thinking, then the behavior will reflect it, and so will the results.

Change people’s beliefs and habits and you can change the way they operate and work, and  the results they achieve. 

It’s our subconscious thoughts and beliefs - our mental paradigms - that make us perform the way we do. We can never achieve more than we believe we can, but if we do not know what we believe about ourselves we can never be sure what we can do or achieve.

The key to better activity, productivity, and results and revenue is often creating new habits in the sales team, not new marketing strategies. 

If you want to know how to close the Knowing-Doing Gap in your team or company, and introduce new habits that will make a big difference, ask me about my coaching program ‘Thinking Into Results’ or read more here - www.StuartDoughty.TIRitstime.com