I have a saying that goes something like this, ‘What you cannot define you cannot measure; what you cannot measure you cannot reproduce; what you cannot reproduce, you cannot control or manage.’ I came up with this quote while designing the K-Method Systems & Processes to explain why most salespeople and the businesses that they work for are continually at odds when it comes to expectations and the results being produced. What I have come to realize as the ‘norm’ for most people is that they will openly admit or profess that they want more from life, and by that I mean that they want success as defined by the culture, but wrestle with paying the price of admission. They will day dream; play the lottery and do just about anything that promises instant gratification instead of committing to the change in themselves that will all but assure them of the success that they seek. You see, committing to oneself takes courage and honesty about our short comings & fears so that a formula or strategy can be developed to take you from where ever you are now to where ever it is you want to go.
Achieving success has and will always take a defined strategy for its attainment, but the type of strategy or formula that the individual will need to execute will be based on their own definition of success. This is important to note as many of us are living in times where our personal economy is in turmoil, meaning that we are not happy with the results that show up in our paychecks or the envelope from a utility company with the pink notices. `We continually re-enforce our beliefs via self-talk that the reason we are not living the life of our dreams is that ‘they or it’, which is always out there is responsible for and are keeping us from living the life we want. The good news is that the future has not yet been written, which means that the information you are about to receive is timely. Your future, which begins right now with your next breath will be limited by one of two things, the strategy you use to propel yourself forward or the fear that you have decided to own, that’s it. The reason I call it good news, is that you have the power to affect both of these things when you are armed with the correct information, so let me share some of what I know with you.
A strategy allows us to lay out the game plan that we will use to achieve any goal that we set for ourselves. It forces us to think it through from start to finish and connect the dots to make sure that we are in fact on the right track. If the dots do not connect, the strategy is flawed and better questions need to be asked to resolve the conflicts. Since we are selling professionals, let’s look at the strategy we currently use to achieve the results we are getting. Most salespeople that work in the dealership environment are severely handicapped by their limited knowledge about what it is that they actually do as selling professionals. In most cases, outside of the initial training that they received when they began their careers, many of them have never picked up a book, taken a class outside of product knowledge or invested in tools to help them grow. They do today what they did yesterday and continually compare their successes and failures with those who are just like them; instead of a standard based on what is actually possible for those who are truly excellent at their craft.
What many fail to realize is that the frustration that they feel is not about the results they are getting, but their perceived powerlessness to change the outcome. If you look at a roadmap for what it really is, you will see that it is just a series of strategies for getting to a myriad of destinations. However, you the reader of the map still have to choose the starting point and destination in order to determine your specific strategy for arriving at your destination. Here is the point, if you do not have a plan that includes actual steps that you can take and activities whose results can be measured to determine areas you need to improve in, then all you have to do is look behind you to see where you have been to see where you are going.
As I stated earlier, the future has not been written as of yet, but it is coming! If you fail to lay out the strategy for your business or career by not engaging in intentional activities that can be quantified, then by default the next ‘X’ amount of years will look like the last ‘Y’ amount years. In this competitive market place we now live in, change is not an option it is mandatory for survival and so is an intelligent approach to how we do whatever it is that we do. Being knowledgeable about how the dots are connected when it comes to the systems and processes we engage in daily is no longer optional, but a requirement for producing sustainable results. The future is coming. The question is will you be ready to meet the life you have been dreaming about? Or will you be dragged kicking and screaming by circumstances to a future that looks a lot like the past from which you came.
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My website: www.thekurtissmith.com or www.kmethod.com
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/kurtismith
K-Method blog: http://kmethod.com/blog/blog
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