It’s that time of the year when people start making resolutions. Many people will buy a gym membership, while others will quit drinking (or some other vice). At work, people are talking about how next year will be better than the current year. Business is 20% ideas and 80% execution and often times I find companies have great intentions without any capacity to bring them to fruition. To that end, here are the five reasons your business will gain little to no additional traction in 2015 than you did this year.
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I am not sure what Zig Ziglar tape I listened to back in the day but I vividly remember the point he makes - which is that salespeople have one of the most important jobs in the world. Everything you have and will ever have is the result of someone selling it to you at some point. Salespeople remain one of the greatest connection points between the product and the customers they benefit. Inventors with amazing discoveries would have their inventions piled up in closets and warehouses if not for the work of salespeople who bring that magic to consumers worldwide. In To Sell is Human, Daniel Pink argues that, in today’s world, we are constantly in a sales position - whether selling our kids on why they need to finish their homework or selling our ideas to our colleagues and collaborators at work. Sales is something that is woven into the very fabric of our daily lives as we try to influence decisions and gain traction around ideas or efforts.
Have you ever misspelled a word in an email by mistake? How did it make you feel?
Eight months ago, I was in a really good place, professionally speaking. At age 30, I was running the sales and marketing programs for a 100MM-dollar-a-year middle-market environmental services firm. I sat on the board of the company and had direct involvement in most major decisions within the firm. Our CEO was a brilliant businessperson whom I very much admired, and the guy had serious drive.