I am an IT guy. That's clear but often I think about many situations from a salesman's point of view, trying to view the world from another angle that I sometimes have no idea how it could be.
What do I mean by that? I'll explain but before please let me share with you this.
I must recognize, even thou IT is a really cool area to work and even thou because the pace it is so demanding we must run everyday just to remain in the same place, unfortunately not always we have the chance to deal with cool and state-of-the-art technology. Yes, sometimes we have to deal with repetitive tasks, sometimes boring tasks, sometimes old products etc. If you are an IT person you know that and might agree with me. Legacy base is a consequence of this fast paced world, as well.
In those situations we wonder: Mate, I am doing this because it was handed over to me out of nowhere and I know this is no rocket-science and despite that I must finish it by tomorrow. I bet we all at some point of our carreers dealt with this scenario, which normally leaves a strange taste in our mouth telling us there is nothing new to be learn from that experience.
Fear not my friends, there is always something to learn does not matter the scenario.
Now, let's get back to the sales person thing I was talking about.
The sales guy after a contact, client visit, sales performed, email delivered to a potential customer, whatever the reason, there is something they must do which is ask himself : What could I have done better ?
Sounds easy and trivial but that's a hard thing to do and as a matter of fact that's something I am trying to do with myself: What have I done today that I've could do better ? What I've done wrong today ?
As the time goes by this becomes a habit just like drinking coffee at 3pm and soon you'll picture yourself in a state of eternal improvement, or at least awareness of it. I am not telling you this is a magic rule to follow in order to achieve the perfection, far from it; but it certainly does something to us which IMHO is a must for a better version of ourselves: It takes us out of our comfort zone.
As the time goes by this becomes a habit just like drinking coffee at 3pm and soon you'll picture yourself in a state of eternal improvement, or at least awareness of it. I am not telling you this is a magic rule to follow in order to achieve the perfection, far from it; but it certainly does something to us which IMHO is a must for a better version of ourselves: It takes us out of our comfort zone.
Yet there are people out there who pay for this kind of professional service, Personal Coaching. Honestly, would be great to pay for one of those but I still prefer to put my hard earned money into my mortgage or my kid's school fees. So why not we become our own Personal Coach?
How do I do?
I ask myself: What could I have done better? and I write them on paper. I make a list. I put them on paper because I want that document to be a reminder, and you know what? writing it's free and doesn't hurt, specially the bad things and mistakes we made. Yes, the mistakes are important also because they will be like beacons in this dark ocean of our tries, but I try not to concentrate too much on them after all mistakes are consequences of tries. If you do not do many mistakes it means you haven't tried enough.
Just to illustrate look at our mailboxes with lots of emails trying to sell us stuff. Pay attention to them, I could say that the vast majority is really badly written, from the sales point of view of course. Lots of information about the product requirements, features and prices but very few information about how it would make my life easier or things like why I should buy it now and save effectively 1 hour of coding everyday.
The truth is: very few of them talk about benefits. Very few of them mention how their product will help the customer with its problems.
So, here it goes a good exercise: Try to find out what else that message wants to say in the email selling you stuff. Why I should go for this product instead the competition? How would you write the message to appeal to people like yourself. And how to put yourself in other situations out of your comfort zone? Try to think about markets you don't know much about, like think how would you manage that coffee shop. If you were an attendant how would you receive a client like yourself looking for a good coffee during the working day?
I ask myself: What could I have done better? and I write them on paper. I make a list. I put them on paper because I want that document to be a reminder, and you know what? writing it's free and doesn't hurt, specially the bad things and mistakes we made. Yes, the mistakes are important also because they will be like beacons in this dark ocean of our tries, but I try not to concentrate too much on them after all mistakes are consequences of tries. If you do not do many mistakes it means you haven't tried enough.
Just to illustrate look at our mailboxes with lots of emails trying to sell us stuff. Pay attention to them, I could say that the vast majority is really badly written, from the sales point of view of course. Lots of information about the product requirements, features and prices but very few information about how it would make my life easier or things like why I should buy it now and save effectively 1 hour of coding everyday.
The truth is: very few of them talk about benefits. Very few of them mention how their product will help the customer with its problems.
So, here it goes a good exercise: Try to find out what else that message wants to say in the email selling you stuff. Why I should go for this product instead the competition? How would you write the message to appeal to people like yourself. And how to put yourself in other situations out of your comfort zone? Try to think about markets you don't know much about, like think how would you manage that coffee shop. If you were an attendant how would you receive a client like yourself looking for a good coffee during the working day?
Excellence is not a point to reach, it is a trajectory made up of very very small baby steps. Hundreds of them taken one at a time, one each day.
See you later.
By Edge Pereira
I like this - I will add this to my daily habbits list :) Also sounds a little bit like the Japanese term Kaizen: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaizen
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