“We’ve got to define what we mean by good at something in sales, especially everything we do has to be measurable and repeatable.” – Jack Wilson in today’s Tip 545
What are you good at?
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Jack Wilson on LinkedIn
Gallup’s CliftonStrengths Assessment Tests
531: Ikigai (part 1 of 6)
538: Ikigai (part 2 of 6) What You Love
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Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today Jack Wilson, “The Guy with Ikigai” is back to talk more about Ikigai in part 3 of his 6 part series. Here he is:
Jack Wilson: Hey there, Daily Sales Tips Community. I’m happy to be back with part 6 of defining your Ikigai. If you’ve been following along, then hopefully you have a high-level understanding of the framework and you’ve begun the work to determine what you love. If not, don’t worry, check back on tips #531 and #538 to get caught up. For today’s tip, we moved down into the left of what we love, and we turn our focus to the next of four components of Ikigai, which is what are you good at?
Let’s start first by understanding, we’ve got to define what we mean by good at something in sales, especially everything we do has to be measurable and repeatable. The benchmarks we choose to measure good are ultimately what we use to develop our personal sense of ability. But buyer beware, there are helpful and negative ways of measuring ourselves. Take the good old fashioned comparison model. Let’s say I’m on a sales team with DeJuan. And DeJuan books, one meeting for every X amount of dials. And he’s the best on the team. I might look at him and say, “Damn, DeJuan is the man. I’ve got to be more like him.” Well, not so fast, cause one of my mentors used to say, “So what? Compared to what?”
So we booked a ton of meetings. Are they qualified? How many of them close? What if you booked half as many and closed twice as much. The devil is in the details. Try to compare not just the quantities, but the quality of your actions as well. I bring up comparisons first because for better or worse, that tends to be the first place we go. A better approach though is to identify the key tasks you perform as part of your day to day. Try compiling an exhausting list of everything you do. I mean it, everything. If checking email is something you do throw it on the list.
Once your list is complete rank these tasks in order of importance, don’t rush it. Take your time. You should have to wrestle between a few of them and make some trade-offs before it feels complete. Finally, once you’ve identified all the stuff you do and you’ve organized it by what matters most it’s time to evaluate how good you feel you are at each. I know, I said feel, and it might seem uncomfortable. But at first, you’ve got to check in with yourself. By the end of this exercise, you should have a list of the stuff you do, how important it all is and how good you think you are already each.
Now let’s get some conflicting data to help you evaluate. You need to verify your opinion with a few different sources. Start closest to your work first. Ask a leader, maybe a colleague to review your list and solicit their honest opinion. It’s important to let them know you’re vulnerable. Give them permission to be brutally honest and promise them that you’ll check your ego at the door. Next, ask some non-work even family. And lastly, perhaps a shameless plug here, consider asking a coach or a mentor.
So now that you’ve compared yourself to others in the industry, you reflected on your own skills and solicited some important feedback from those within your sphere of influence. What’s left? Consider you evaluating your aptitude and personality traits by leveraging some well-known industry tools for more on that, I’ll leave it to you, Scott.
Scott Ingram: Thanks Jack. One of the tools that we’re working to incorporate into the broader Sales Success Experience is Gallup’s Clifton Strengths tools. For just $20 you can take a quick assessment that will help you identify your top 5 strengths. I’m sure I’ll be talking more about that in the future, but if you take the Strengths Finder or if you’ve already taken it in the past. Send a note to: [email protected] and let me know. I’d love to give you a little preview of what we’re working on. For a link to that tool, Jack’s LinkedIn profile and more, just click over to DailySales.Tips/545
Once you’ve done that make sure you’re subscribed to the podcast so you don’t miss the rest of this series, or tomorrow’s tip. I’ll talk to you then. Thanks for listening!