Here at the Coaches’ Coach, we are relentlessly insistent that all of our coaches set a crystal clear vision for their business coaching practice. That’s because, more than anything else, achieving your sales goals is about keeping yourself in a healthy, resourceful mental state––no matter what. We do that by focusing our thinking on the right things.
I’m sure you’re like me in this: I do the things that I do every day because of a very powerful sense of purpose I have for living my life on earth. I’m focused every minute of every day of my life on the things that matter most to me: loving God, serving my wife and kids, taking great care of my clients, being a blessing at my church, and serving the missions I care about. Every day I make a deliberate decision to do the things TODAY that will get me where I’m going.
Here are the tools I use to sharpen my focus.
Vision Book
The first is a vision book. Most people use a PowerPoint slide deck to create it. You can download the template I use on our free resources page.
Every day I make a deliberate decision to do the things TODAY that will get me where I’m going.
Most mornings I spend just a few minutes contemplating my vision book. To stay in the right frame of mind, I remind myself frequently of the future I want to have and stay focused on my vision and goals. I don’t focus on money, because money is simply a means to an end. I focus on the things I’m living for.
I like to organize my vision around what I call “the 7 F’s” of a full life:
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- Faith
- Fidelity
- Family
- Friends
- Finances
- Fitness
- Fun
In December of each year, I go through the 7 F’s and I think about the vision and desires I have for my life in each one of these areas. Then I craft one or several slides for each category to remind myself of the connection between achieving my sales goals and my ability to live the kind of life I want to live and to achieve the vision I have. When I craft my vision book, I use a combination of pictures and language to stimulate both the visual and auditory parts of my brain.
7 F’s SWOT Analysis
Some people have a tough time figuring out what to put in their vision book. If that’s you, then I recommend that you conduct a “7 Fs SWOT Analysis.” This technique is designed to help you think reflectively about what you really want to achieve. In each of the 7F categories, briefly identify the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats that you’re aware of. Then identify one to three goals for each category. Don’t put pressure on yourself! Evaluate each category only to the extent that it feels natural and easy. Don’t force anything that doesn’t flow naturally. Some categories will have lots of energy and some will have little or none. This exercise is designed to facilitate grateful reflection and deliberate action and improvement. Above all, enjoy!
Business Vision Document
I’ll never forget when I drafted my first “Business Vision” document. I was flying home from a business coaching conference and I’d been totally inspired by what some other business coaches around the world were doing. I decided then and there to take my business from a practice to a firm and to grow from around $440k to over $1M in the upcoming year. Over the course of that several-hour-long flight, I banged out what my business would look like, and it became the inspiration for all my hard work over next several months.
Sure enough, a couple years later, the vision had been achieved and I had my $1M firm. But there’s no telling what would have happened had I not committed myself to growing my business, setting down the vision with crystal clear specificity in my business vision document, and then committing to it.
How about you? Do you have a vision that gets you up in the morning, that pushes you forward when times get tough, that keeps you grounded in your goals and the life you want to achieve? If not, now’s the time to put one in place.
And for more tools, templates, and techniques like these, get a FREE 30-day trial of our comprehensive business coaching system!
