As we move into the New Year, ‘tis the season of resolutions and goal setting. While I highly recommend setting goals, I also believe each goal needs to be broken into daily actions.

It may be relatively simple, for example, to set your annual sales goals at $1 million and break that down to monthly or weekly sales goals. But to meet that goal you need to create daily tasks and strategies to reach it.

Taking a Page From Football

In football, every team has major goals it sets out to accomplish. An ultimate goal is to win the Super Bowl. It is easy to set secondary goals—scoring more touchdowns to win all the games in the season—but if a coach’s entire game plan was to score more touchdowns than the other team, he would be fired on the spot. Instead, to reach that ultimate goal, each team must determine a strategy for each and every play.

Undisciplined and unprepared teams tend to opt for the big play (like a Hail Mary pass!) and go for the touchdown every play. In selling travel, that would be akin to setting weekly sales goals and then hoping world cruisers happen to call you.

Move the Chains

In football, most plays are designed to move the chains. The chains are used to measure the 10 yards a team needs to move the ball so it keeps control and gets the opportunity to move the chains again and again until it reaches the end zone for a touchdown.

Success comes down to taking small steps and repeating them until you reach the final goal. As in football and travel, victory is achieved if there is a plan for each play. Understanding that it can be hard fought to move the chains, you need to know as much as possible about the competition. You can move the chains through follow-up calls, unique and engaging emails, providing extra service to help clients personalize their trips and more.

Occasionally taking the risk on a long shot is fine, but on a day-to-day basis, you simply need to focus on getting the chains moved up to get a little closer to the goal line!