Sales Leadership: Your Menu for Personal and Professional Success
Several of my recent blogs have begun to discuss the business and sales management aspects of being prepared for 2011. The blog this week discusses the need to also focus on your 2011 plan for your personal life
During a recent keynote program I held with a group of individuals from an association I discussed the need to build both a successful personal and professional life to truly succeed. As some of you know, I enjoy cooking and collect cookbooks (over 150 in my library). During the session I discussed how pizza can be an analogy for life. Now everyone can relate to pizza, right? Thin or thick crust? Cheese or loaded with mushrooms, pepperoni, onions, sausage, etc. I like to suggest that everyone's life, both personal and professional, is made up of multiple "slices" with many ingredients.
Your personal life includes: family/friends, fitness/health, net worth, fun/recreation, physical/home environment, commitment to personal/spiritual growth, career and romance/significant other. Your professional life includes: fulfillment, productivity, teamwork, leadership, time management, commitment to personal/professional growth, focus/discipline and communication skills. I like to ask the audience to rate themselves on each slice on a scale of 1-7 (7 being high) to determine which areas are out of balance.
Take this short self assessment and evaluate what slices are working for you and what you need to work on as you move into 2011. Send me an email if you want my keynote handout that we use during the program. [email protected] You might also like to review our blog from October 12, 2010 for more insights on creating a "No Regret's Life."
I also covered the three components for creating a successful Menu of Life, which include:
- Understand the power of impact: To increase your personal/professional success, you must increase your impact on the lives of others. As a sales management consultant it occurred to me that sales managers not only impact the professional success of their individual salespeople and teams, they also must focus on the impacting their personal lives as well.
- Develop Creativity and Break-Out: The best sales managers are creative; in looking at how to strategize and win more opportunities, in creating a winning sales culture and in solving the day to day problems that arise in every organization. The good news? Creativity can be learned -- make it a goal to read a book on creativity or take a workshop.
- Be Real, Be Warm, Be More: As sales leaders or as individuals it's about caring, understanding, listening and assisting others in their life. Take time for conversation; build on the conversation to truly understand the person. In my keynotes I like to say, "My goal is to enhance our mutual relationship, ensure our time together is profitable (not necessary in financial terms) and have fun!"
As you work on your organizations business & sales plan for 2011, work on your personal life plan as well. If you would like us to speak at your sales kick off meetings or other groups-just let me know!
Ken provides keynotes, consulting services and products designed to improve business performance. Contact him by e-mail at [email protected].
Posted by Ken Thoreson on November 16, 2010