YOUR CAREER OR BUSINESS GOALS?

The question of "What business am I in?" is not as simple as it seems.

To identify your career or business goals, you must first learn to define your business in terms of what you do for your customer or for your company.

Expand the definition of your business so that it is as broad as possible. Never stop with the first answer. Take the first answer to this question and find new applications, new markets, and new definitions for it.

Let me give you an example...

Railroads

At the beginning of the last century, the railroads that defined themselves strictly as railroads—providers of rail transport—failed to see that new technologies and methods of transport, such as trucks and airplanes, were a potential threat to their business. If they had defined themselves instead as movers of goods and people—providers of transportation—their response to the changes in technology might have been different.

When you define your business, think in terms of how your products or services affect the lives and work of other people and organizations. Consider both existing customers and those customers that you would like to acquire.

Target the Future

The next question to ask is, "What business will I be in if things continue the way they are today?" Think about your career or business two years from now, then in five years. If you do not change the way you define your work or your business, what kind of work will you be doing?

Is it a sound and viable strategy to continue in your current way of working or doing business, or should you be looking at changing in some way? Start by imagining what business you could be in.

Where would a dramatic change in knowledge or skills, products or services, or industries and markets lead you? To express it another way, if you were willing to take stock of the environment for your career or business and commit to taking action, what business could you be in, if you really wanted to be? 

Analyze your Market

Take the analysis a step further and think about what business you should be in. To do this, take a careful and comprehensive self-inventory. Examine your skills, your abilities, your ambitions, your energies, and especially your heart’s desires. Then analyze the market in which your career or business will be operating. Is there a fit?

If not, either evaluate the changes you would personally need to make to create the career or business that would flourish in that market, or select a more appropriate market.

These questions are among the most important of your life: What changes will you have to make to become the kind of person who can live the life and do the work you would really like to be doing in the future?

Action Exercise

What business are you in? What business could you be in? What business should you be in?

What actions are you going to take immediately?

WINNING PRESENTATION: THE GAP ANALYSIS

As a salesperson, you are in the business of gap analysis. Think about it. Do you ever feel like a "problem detective"? Your job, somewhat like a police inspector searching for suspects, is to find problems for which your product or service is the ideal solution.

Think of your product or service as a key. You make calls looking for locks that your key will open. In the prospecting phase, you insert the key and find that it fits. In the presenting phase, you twist the key and open the lock. In the closing phase, you turn the handle and push the door open.

Use Questions As Sales Tools

Like a verbal detective, the tools of your trade are questions. You use them to get appointments, uncover problems, and discover gaps between where the prospect is now and where the prospect could be by using your product or service. You then show the prospect how much better his situation could be by owning and enjoying what you are selling.

Clarify the Need

There is an old saying, "No need? No presentation!" Before you begin your presentation, it must be clear to the prospect that there is a distance between where he is and where he could be. The prospect must recognize that he has a need that is unsatisfied or a problem that is unsolved. The prospect must also feel that the gap between the real and the ideal is large enough to warrant taking action.

Build Buying Desire

Buying desire is in direct proportion to the intensity of the buyer's need on the one hand, and to the clarity of the solution represented by your product or service on the other. This process of taking the prospect from cold to luke warm to hot is accomplished by the skillful use of questions that uncover the gap and then expand it to the point where the customer is ready to take buying action.

Putting these Ideas into Action

Now, here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action.

First, ask good questions aimed at uncovering the real need or problem the customer has. Listen attentively to the answers. Never assume that you know already.

Second, the larger the gap the customer sees between where he is today and where he could be by using your product or service, the greater is his desire to buy. Show him continually the size of this gap.

3 LESSONS FROM THE GREATS

Over the past year, I've read about fifteen biographies of
the most influential people I could find, including Amelia
Earhart, Charles Lindbergh, both Theodore and Franklin
Roosevelt, Winston Churchill (two biographies) and others.
As part of my New Year's review, I took time to think about
the factors that made them so successful.
Obviously, the common denominators were not family or
wealth. Amelia Earhart grew up poor and her father was an
alcoholic. Orville and Wilbur Wright repaired bicycles for
a living.
Winston Churchill did not become Prime Minister until he
was 65 and spent his middle years in "the wilderness,"
rejected and ridiculed. Well into his forties, William
Randolph Hearst was viewed as a dangerous "crank," and yet
he became one of the richest and most powerful leaders in
America.
So, what made them successful? I came up with at least
three powerful traits that seemed to make all the
difference.
1. First, they knew exactly what they wanted. Many people
have observed that "clarity is power" and these people were
clear about what they stood for and what they wanted.
Churchill's views on Hitler never wavered. The Wright
brothers were determined to build an airplane. FDR set out
to be President while recovering from polio, when many
people thought his productive life was over. Henry Ford was
determined to develop a V8 engine when his engineers
thought it couldn't be done. Earhart new exactly what she
wanted to do and planned, plotted and schemed to make her
flights happen.
This is why I'm such a strong believer in setting goals!
If you have life-time goals, great! But even if it's merely
a specific, measurable goal to increase your income by 20%
this year, or to change jobs, or to take a trip to Paris,
write it down. Visualize it. Affirm it! Clarity brings
power!
2. Second, they were determined. Each of these people had
a strong personality. I'm sure their family and friends
thought they were stubborn, bull-headed, even obnoxious,
but they "stayed the course." They fought for what they
wanted. Churchill endured rejection, was accused of treason
and war-mongering, but he knew where he stood, what he
believed, and he never flinched.
I loved the stories of the Wright brother's failure.
Everyone knows of their ultimate success at Kitty Hawk, but
few remember the plans that didn't "fly." Most people know
that it took Thomas Edison 10,000 "failures" to invent the
electric light bulb, but few seem to have learned the
lesson.
I've worked with too many clients who have `tried' to
start a business or achieve some other goal, but quit
because "it didn't work out." If it were easy, everyone
else would have already done it!
3. They worked very, very hard. We all wish success were
easier. That's part of human nature. We love the promise
that we can "work less and make more" and when there's a
smarter, better way, I always want to help my clients find
it! That's the joy of being a coach! But often there are no
alternatives to hard, hard work.
Earhart's flights were physically exhausting and at least
once she literally wet her pants during a long flight. W.
R. Hearst worked all night, and both Teddy and Franklin
Roosevelt drove their staffs to exhaustion with their
endless working hours. After formal dinners, Churchill
routinely went back to work until 2:00 or 3:00 in the
morning, (or later!) and one of his rules was to "lay down
200 bricks and write 2000 words a day." That was an
enormous out-put!
To make next your best year ever, my suggestion is that you
have very clear goals, that you make up your mind to stay
focused no matter how long it takes, and that you agree to
work very, very hard. If you are fortunate and success
comes quickly, good for you! But more often, success, fame
and fortune are the result of long hours, persistent effort
and clear goals. Stay the course. Make this the new year you
turn it around and create the life you truly want.

HOW TO GO FROM NOTHING TO EVERYTHING

This week I received a series of emails from an artist who
complained about my advice in IMPACT. She wrote that since
she has no money, my recommendation to attend seminars was
unreasonable because "it takes money to make money." She felt
that artists are often unappreciated and under-paid. She
complained that she had no contacts and no resources, so my
"advice is a sham." And she's not alone.
Of course, it's easier to turn an idea into reality if you
already have plenty of tools and resources! In that sense,
her opinions are quite reasonable and I understand them.
Fortunately, however, her opinions are also somewhat
misguided. The truth is that we all come into the world alone.
At birth, we have no language, no money, no skills and no
resources, but we need not stay that way.
Here are the steps that, as far as I know, every successful
person has used to achieve their goals:

1. First, every innovation and great fortune begins as a
simple thought. Often it begins as just a whiff of thought,
a glimmer or an intuition, a simple, "I wonder what would
happen if...."

2. Second, the vast majority of people dismiss these
thoughts or ideas. They get distracted and nothing ever
develops. BUT -- some people latch on to the idea. They
"incubate" and ponder it. They ask good questions about how
to proceed, who else might be interested, where they could
get more information.

3. Third, successful people take action. It might be a
tiny action, but they read a book, make a call, jot some
notes, explore the internet. They do something to record
and expand their idea.

4. Fourth, they find good people to help them. Too many
people keep their ideas to themselves and their dream dies
like a seed without water. Successful people form a team or
MasterMind group to ask more and better questions, and
together they find answers.

5. Fifth, they develop a strategy. At first, it doesn't
have to be a brilliant or even an effective strategy,
but they find a way to move forward, building on
what works and learning from their failures.

6. Sixth, they persist and leverage everything "until."
They never give up and they never quit.

No one who reads this is powerless or without resources.
You can read. You have friends. There are biographies and
you have the internet. There are coaches and models all
around you. There are investors looking for the "next big
thing." You may have to start small, and like an airplane
going down the run way, there may be a long period of slow-
going while you get started, but ultimately, airplanes do
take off and soar!
Thomas Edison started with ideas. Bill Gates started with
an idea. Oprah Winfrey started poor and alone, but she had
some good ideas. And all of them took action. Share your
dream with a "MasterMind" group of friends. Ask great
questions. Find the answers and take action. Everything in
life starts as an idea, a glimmer or a dream. The difference
is that successful people follow a strategy and persist
until their ideas become reality.