2 Accept the fact that you didn't quite make your sales goal for the year. Figure out a way to work smarter next year to increase your odds of achieving your target. When the idea first occurred to her, it seemed like such a win-win situation. Now she wasn't so sure. Marge Brygay was a hardworking sales rep for Inspire Learning Corporation, a company intent on becoming the top educational software provider in five years. That newly adopted strategic goal translated into an ambitious, million-dollar sales target for each of Inspire's sales reps. At the beginning of the fiscal year, her share of the sales department's operational goal seemed entirely reasonable to Marge. She believed in Inspire's products. The company had developed innovative, highly regarded maths, language, science and social studies programs for the pre-school to Year 12 market. What set the software apart was a foundation in truly cutting- edge research. Marge had seen for herself how Inspire programs could engage whole classrooms of normally unmotivated kids; the significant rise in scores on those increasingly important standardised tests bore out her subjective impressions.