We are simply practicing the art of wishful thinking when we dictate goals from the top down and ask people to accept these goals without the facts, evidence, and logic to support them. It is simply impossible to develop realistic goals that are not based on the specifics of average sale and closing rate. Many managers and owners base their goal development process on the company's fiscal year instead of the calendar year. Most salespeople look at their W-2 at the end of each calendar year to judge how close they came to reaching their annual income goal. The goal development process should take advantage of this pervasive characteristic of human nature.
Fiscal years are for accountants.
There's a huge psychological advantage to kicking off goal development January 1st rather than at the beginning of company's fiscal year. When goals are based on the later, it becomes difficult for the sales people to follow their progress. They judge their income based on the calendar year and, in doing so, they develop their own goals based on the calendar. When this happens we again have salespeople running simultaneous goals that are often different from the company's goals. Mathematically they should not be different at all.