I’m a bit leary of the word success, it makes me a bit queasy now when I see it written. What it represents is great, but as a word, it has been overused and abused over the years. This abuse has watered it down – it has been so broadly used that it really means nothing on most cases.
Success in what specifically?
Successful at what specifically?
We’ve all stumbled onto and been hooked into one of those articles that hang around the home page of a search engine that reads a headline like “10 tips for success.”
When we click on it and start digging in, one tip will read something like “make sure to eat a banana first thing in the morning” and another will go “always listen to your heart,” and yet another: “cornstarch your slacks.”
Great.
These are really relevant, actionable and will truly help me achieve the results I’m after.
Results are specific.
You’re either about making Results happen, or you’re everyone else.
Funding Pros must be Results-focused.
The legend, J. Gittomer spells out his tenets for success in sales. For Funding Pros, these are the tenets to follow to achieve superior Results:
- Believe you can: It’s that mental posture for success at producing the results you’re after – strong belief you are capable at producing the results. It requires consistent daily self-support, self-encouragement and self-investment.
How much do you believe in you?
- Create the environment: The right environment at home and work encourages you to continue to press on. Supportive spouses, family, friends and work peers make the ride a smoother and fun one.
How conducive is your environment to your attitude?
- Have the right associations: Hang around the right people, and the right things will happen. Staying away from poisonous people and hanging around those who are either supportive of the results you’re after or are producing the results you’re after is key. Whoever you are with most, you will most likely become (whether you are conscious of it or not).
How successful at the results you’re committed to are the people you asdsociate with?
- Expose yourself to what’s new: If you’re not learning every day, your competition is. New relevant and actionable information you actually implement and internalize is essential to consistent jumps in performance and RESULTS!
How much time are you spending each day learning something new?
- Plan for the day: Prepare, set goals, create gameplans and check in obsessively for progress.
Are your plans and goals in front of your face every day?
- Become valuable: The more valuable you become, the more the marketplace will reward you. Give first, as your value is linked to your knowledge and your willingness to help others.
How valuable are you to others?
- Have the answers your customers and prospects need: The better you get at solving problems, and helping customers and prospects solve their problems, the better the results you will achieve. Prospects don’t want arbitrary facts that matter to you, they want answers relevant to them – superior knowledge about what you do to help prospects achieve what they want to do.
How good are your answers?
- Recognize opportunity: Stay alert for the situations that can create successful opportunities. Staying in a positive attitude is what allows you to see and capitalize on possibilities when opportunity strikes – because it often shows up in the form of adversity.
How well do you spot an opportunity?
- Take advantage of opportunity: To recognize is the first step, and the second step is to act on it. Very few will see the opportunity (because it is disguised as adversity) and even fewer will capitalize on it (because they fear the change it will involve).
Do you seize opportunity?
- Take responsibility: The less blame you spread to others, the higher the degree of the results you will achieve. Funding Pros own everything they do AND everything that happens to them.
Do you blame or take responsibility for your actions?
- Take action: Just do it. Actions are the only way to bridge goals and plans with RESULTS. Nothing happens until you do something to make it happen – every day.
Are you taking action or doing a lot of talking (and not a lot of walking)?
- Make mistakes: The best teacher is failure, as it’s the rudest of awakenings and the breeding ground for self-determination. If framed effectively, mistakes are learning experiences not to be repeated.
How willing are you to make mistakes?
- Be willing to risk: No risk, no reward, no nothing. Taking calculated chances is a common thread in achieving superior Results. Most people won’t risk because they fear what they believe to be the unknown. The real issue is lack of preparation and education – these are what breed that self-confidence to take intelligent risks.
How willing are you to risk?
- Keep your eye on the prize: Keep your goals posted in front of you at all times. Too many foolish diversions will take you off the path to where you want to go.
How focused is your effort to your goals?
- Balance yourself: You are only going to do as well as your mental, physical, spiritual and emotional health is doing. Synergize your personal goals with your professional goals.
How balanced are you?
- Invest, don’t spend: You are a Results Engine that needs deliberate maintenance and upgrades.
Do you invest in yourself every month?
- Stick at it until you win: Most people fail because they quit too soon. That’s not you – make a plan and COMMIT to see the plan through until its done.
How many projects have you abandoned before they were complete?
- Develop and maintain a positive attitude: Cynicism is the norm, but its that positive attitude that allows Funding Pros to see what others can’t see and solve problems others can’t solve – and its more fun. 🙂
How positive is your attitude?
19. Ignore idiots: There will always be those right there with you to rain on your parade (their foolish diversion). Press on and keep your eye on the ball.
Who do you need to cut out?
20. Simplify: (This is bonus one from me.). There is a lot here, but action is all that matters – and we cannot take effective action towards Results if we are overcomplicating and focusing on too many things at once. Just commit to mastering one of these tenets this month and then move on to the next.
As Bruce Lee said: “I don’t fear the man who knows 10,000 kicks. I fear the man who knows 1 kick and has practiced it 10,000 times.”
Make it simple and run with it.
Which one of these tenets will you commit to mastering this month to up your sales game?
-FundingStrategist
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