It's the big goal, cut down to pocket size: the piece of the annual number that today has to produce. The reverse-engineered goal gives you sales per month and appointments per week; the pocket goal carries the smallest unit of it into the day itself — the standard each day is won or lost against, in numbers small enough to be undeniable.
The short answer
Annual goals fail at the level of abstraction: nobody can “work on” $250,000 today. But the same goal divided down — 100 sales, 9 a month, the appointments that produce them — yields a daily figure a rep can hold in his head on the drive to the first door. That held figure is the pocket goal. It converts every day into a scored event: hit the number, the goal is on pace; miss it, the correction is known immediately, while correction is still cheap.
How it runs
The “pocket” part is functional: the goal travels with the rep, into the truck and up the walkway, where the decisions that determine it actually get made — whether to knock the extra street, run the framework fully at 7 PM, make the call instead of postponing it. A goal on the office wall steers nothing at 7 PM. A goal in the pocket is present for every micro-decision the day consists of, which is the only place goals are ever actually won.
Go deeper
Everything in these guides points at the same act: run the round before the appointment. Round 1 is free. Spar before you knock.