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Ben Hogan, who was arguably the greatest ball striker the game of golf has ever known, taught that if you wanted to improve your swing you should focus on the cause rather than the result.
This was good advice for golfers and brilliant advice for sales professionals. Because in sales, if you want to sell more it pays to become obsessed over your behaviors, techniques and processes rather than your outcomes.
Most Sellers Obsess Over Outcomes
Most salespeople are focused on winning or losing individual deals. They get emotionally wrapped up in every prospect, every conversation, every close attempt. When they win, they're on top of the world. When they lose, they're devastated.
But top performers? They think completely differently. They're not obsessed with any single deal. They're obsessed with the process that creates consistent results over time.
This mindset shift is the difference between feast-or-famine selling and predictable, sustainable success.
The Downside of Outcome Based Sales Goals
Here's what happens when you're obsessed with outcomes instead of process:
Every deal, every month, every quarter becomes life or death. You put all your emotional energy into individual prospects and hitting numbers, which clouds your judgment and makes you act desperate.
You take rejection personally. When someone says no, it's not just a business decision – it feels like a personal attack on your worth as a salesperson.
You make poor decisions under pressure. When you need a deal to close to hit your number, you start discounting too early, chasing bad prospects, or making promises you can't keep.
Your performance becomes inconsistent. You have great months followed by terrible months because you're riding the emotional roller coaster of individual wins and losses.
You burn out faster. The constant emotional highs and lows are exhausting and unsustainable.
Shift to Process Goals
Process goals are different. They focus on the activities and behaviors you can directly control, not the outcomes that depend on factors outside your influence.
Instead of "I need to close three deals this month," a process goal is "I will make 50 prospecting calls every day."
Instead of "I have to win the Johnson account," it's "I will have four meaningful touch points with stakeholders at Johnson this week."
Instead of "I need to hit 120% of quota," it's "I will follow my proven sales methodology on every single opportunity."
Process goals put you in control. You can't control whether a prospect buys, but you can control how many prospects you contact, how well you qualify them, and how consistently you follow your process.
Why Top Performers Love Process Goals
Create predictable results. When you focus on the right activities consistently, the outcomes take care of themselves. It's like compound interest – small, consistent actions create massive results over time.
Reduce emotional volatility. You're not devastated by individual losses because you know that if you stick to your process, the wins will come.
Improve decision-making. When you're not desperate for any particular deal, you make better strategic decisions about where to invest your time and energy.
Build confidence. Every day you hit your process goals, you build momentum and confidence, regardless of whether deals close that day.
Create sustainable habits. Process goals turn success behaviors into automatic habits rather than things you do when you feel motivated.
The Mathematics of Sales Process Goals
Here's why process goals work: Sales is a numbers game, but most people focus on the wrong numbers.
Average performers focus on:
How many deals they close
The size of individual deals
Their closing percentage on active opportunities
Top performers focus on:
How many new prospects they contact daily
How many discovery calls they conduct weekly
How many proposals they deliver monthly
How consistently they follow up with existing prospects
The difference is control. You can't control whether someone buys today, but you can control how many people you talk to today.
Examples of Effective Sales Process Goals
Notice how none of these process goals depend on prospects saying yes. They're all activities you can control through discipline and effort.
Daily Process Goals:
Make 30 prospecting calls before 10 AM
Send 15 personalized LinkedIn messages
Follow up with 10 existing prospects
Update CRM for every interaction
Weekly Process Goals:
Conduct 8 discovery calls
Deliver 3 proposals or presentations
Schedule 5 demos or next-step meetings
Have 2 conversations with existing customers
Monthly Process Goals:
Add 50 new qualified prospects to pipeline
Complete needs analysis on 20 opportunities
Present to 10 decision-making teams
Ask for referrals from 15 customers
Leveraging the Compound Effect
When you focus on process goals consistently, something magical happens: the compound effect kicks in.
If you make 30 prospecting calls every day, that's 150 calls per week, 600 per month, 7,200 per year. Even with low conversion rates, that volume creates massive pipeline.
When you follow up consistently with every prospect using a proven sequence, your closing percentage improves dramatically over time.
By asking every customer for referrals using a systematic approach, your prospecting gets easier and more effective.
Process goals create a flywheel effect where each activity makes the next activity more effective.
Yes, Outcomes Still Matter
This doesn't mean outcomes don't matter. Of course they do. You still need to hit your quota and close deals.
But here's the key: When you focus obsessively on the right processes, the outcomes become predictable byproducts rather than uncertain hopes.
Top performers track outcomes to measure the effectiveness of their process, not to determine their self-worth or emotional state.
If outcomes aren't meeting expectations, they adjust their process, not their emotional investment in individual deals.
Process Goals Create Emotional Freedom
One of the biggest benefits of process goals is the emotional freedom they create.
When your identity and confidence are tied to activities you control rather than outcomes you don't, rejection stops hurting. "No" becomes another data point that helps you improve your process.
You can walk away from bad deals because you're not desperate for any individual outcome. Your pipeline is constantly full because you're always feeding it.
You sleep better at night because you know that if you executed your process well today, you're moving toward your goals regardless of what happened in any specific conversation.
Playing the Long Game
Process goals require patience and faith. You might make 30 calls today and not close anything. But if you make 30 calls every day for six months, you will close deals.
Average performers want immediate gratification. They want every call to turn into a meeting, every meeting to turn into a proposal, every proposal to turn into a close.
Top performers understand that sales is a long-term game where consistent process execution creates inevitable success.
Your brain will resist process goals because they're not as emotionally exciting as big outcome goals. Closing a million-dollar deal feels better than making 30 prospecting calls.
But remember: The calls create the deals. The process creates the outcomes. The activities create the results.
Top performers get excited about process goals because they understand that controlling the process is how you control your destiny in sales.
The Bottom Line
The next time you catch yourself getting emotionally invested in whether a particular prospect buys or not, stop and redirect your focus to your process.
Ask yourself: "Did I execute my process perfectly with this prospect? Did I ask the right questions, follow the right methodology, and advance the opportunity appropriately?"
If the answer is yes, then you've succeeded regardless of the outcome. If the answer is no, then you have something specific to improve for next time.
Your job isn't to close every deal. Your job is to execute your process so well and so consistently that closing deals becomes an inevitable byproduct.
As the great Ben Hogan said, focus on the cause and the results will follow.
And remember, when it's time to go home, always make one more call. Because that one more call is a process goal you can control, and it might just be the one that changes everything.
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