Action & Expertise combine to create Success… be sure you’re taking one, building the second, and defining the third for yourself!
Action
be sure you’re taking one
Currently, I’m annoyed every time someone says “Work Smarter, not Harder.”
Why? Because I truly believe the phrase was made for people who are already working hard! Today though it seems to be an excuse not to put in effort and take action.
I was doing a sales training program at a company and heard a salesperson say that who had been wandering around, getting coffee, chatting away with co-workers. BLECH – what that person needed was to sit back down in their chair and dial the phone. Although I guess that is certainly smarter than what they were doing.
To misquote David Sandler, or perhaps Pete Morrissey the guy who taught me to sell to begin with – “successful salespeople do the things unsuccessful salespeople fail to do.”
The most basic of those things for inside sales is to dial the phone – it is the foundation of everything else we do. Don’t confuse this idea with brute force (expertise is the next section after all) but without dialing the phone how will you talk to a human?
If you don’t talk to a human – how will you have a conversation? Perhaps even about business, their industry, or your product (crazy).
Which of course is how we find a business opportunity – then talk some more to define it and qualify if we’re the best choice.
When we are the best choice… we sell stuff!
To channel my inner soccer fan “S-C-O-R-E” horns blowing, flags waving.
Expertise
building the second
This is where we make sure our actions will move us in the right direction! That the steps we’re taking move us forward. That what we do every day makes us BETTER at finding opportunities, defining & qualifying them, then earning their business.
Malcolm Gladwell talks a lot about expertise in his book The Outliers, mentioning time and time again that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert – regardless of your field. I don’t disagree at all but would like to add that you have to be practicing the RIGHT things.
“Practice makes permanent” ~ David Dolbear (my Northern Wu Style Taijiquan instructor for many years)
Imagine if a ballerina practiced ‘en pointe’ incorrectly – not only would it not be graceful, she would probably hurt herself. The more incorrect practice the worse the injury would be PLUS it certainly isn’t making her into a prima ballerina.
Now that we’ve determined that we need to practice the right stuff – here is a breakdown of what 10,000 hours of practice AT WORK might look like:
- 40 hours x 50 weeks (see I’m giving you vacation time) = 2000 hours/year
- minus the 2 hrs/day we aren’t really working… leaves us with 1500 hours/year
- of that 1500 hours – we might be focusing 1/2 the time = 750 hours/year
- rounding DOWN – it will take us 13 YEARS to become an expert
Have you ever looked at it that way? Even if you add an extra hour each week of working toward expertise it knocks off a chunk of time to achieve expert status.
An extra 24 MINUTES each day will bring that time to 12 years instead of 13 (if you really do the math it is 11.76 yrs vs. 13.33 but who’s keeping track). For some people that would mean popping in an educational CD instead of listening to talk radio on their commute each day.
Add to that reading a sales book or *gasp* two, each year, and there, you are an expert!
Every single day, if we are working to be a little better at what we do, taking tiny steps forward toward expertise, you’ll be amazed at how quickly mastery will come.
Give yourself a leg up on the competition – spend 24 minutes today getting better at your craft, then come back tomorrow for Success.
Success
and defining the third for yourself
Success is an interesting thing; if you are judging your own success by looking at other people you are doing yourself a disservice. Yup – when you measure success in your career and life vs. other people you’ve got it all wrong.
What I’m telling you to do is look at your life ONLY and decide what will indicate success to you! Then go for it.
Is that a foreign concept? Well here are some examples, in no particular order, of answers some clients have given me when we are working on this:
- freedom
- financial security
- comfort for my family
- lack of worry
Why did I pick those four to share? Because they don’t look like typical ‘salesperson success factors’. Most people expect some of the other answers I do hear:
- hit my goal for the year
- increase my paycheck
- earn insert award here
- be in the top 10
What may interest you is that when I hear the traditional answers, I ask
What will that do for YOU?
This is when I get the answers from the first list, and yes – the answers match up 1 to 1, 2 to 2, 3 to 3, 4 to 4 between the two lists.
Yes, that’s right; the answers are from the same salesperson!
When you’re deciding what success is, go past the surface and figure out the deeper result you are looking for in your life!
This week make sure you’re adding Action and Expertise while combining them to create Success.
With success,
Lynn