Did the tide lift your boat?
It is the end of the year … how did you do? Have you completed a self-assessment yet? Have you given yourself the once over? Have you honestly evaluated your efforts? Were you lucky? Or were you good this year? This time of year always brings these types of questions to mind. I can point to the goals and objectives and see what was met and what wasn’t. That’s the easy part, but this is really the time to do the ‘deep dive’ on your own personal effectiveness. How did you meet your goals this year? Did you find the prospects? Or were you lucky that the customer called and had a problem you could solve? I know that over the past 10-15 years, the economy has helped poor sales people look good. The old saying “the tide lifts all boats” was truly in play. But in today’s world, you will see who is and isn’t holding their own. Before your management reviews your performance, you may want to do it yourself and begin to ask these critical questions. When you go into the bosses office in Q1 you should be ready to list the positives and negatives of your performance and what you want to accomplish professionally and personally throughout 2012. Don’t take this article the wrong way, there are a lot of great sales people out there that read this blog. They still need to do a self-evaluation and look for things to improve in 2012. We all need to keep on the track of continuous improvement, but be brutally honest with ourselves along with way. Remember, salesmanship is a true profession where skills need to be honed just like a teacher, doctor or lawyer. We all make mistakes throughout the year, and now is the time to reflect on them and put in place a plan to improve. If you haven’t read the book, PROFITS – Your Seven Letters to Success, maybe now is the time. It is on sales at the KINDLE store at Amazon through the end of 2011 for $3.99 … this is a small price to pay in your quest for continuous improvement. I would like to thank all of you for following this blog throughout the year, over 10,000 readers have read and reviewed this blog over the past 2 years. I hope these articles have given you what you were looking for.
Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and Happy New Year !!