ON A SCALE FROM ONE TO TEN

How many things have you rated on a scale from one to ten in your lifetime? It seems that just about everything can be rated on a one to ten scale if we wanted to. In hospitals they ask about how much pain you are in on a scale of one to ten, we have rated satisfaction indexes on a one to ten scale for just about every kind of business from airlines to zip lines. In most cases we are making the judgment on a service or product that we have used or purchased. How many of you have rated your own skills on a one to ten scale?

In sales there are always things that we can rate ourselves on, how well we plan for selling, how well we deliver an opening, how well we demonstrate, probe, answer questions, overcome objections, and close just to name a few. But how many of us actually rate ourselves on a regular basis and take action on our own self assessment?

Before you get out your calculator and start a spread sheet containing every activity you perform every day, I want you to do a little research. You need to gather some information in order for your self evaluation to be accurate, factual, and actionable.

First you need to decide if this is an activity that you can be brutally honest with yourself about. If you rate yourself on the one to ten scale with all tens, than you have done nothing to help yourself improve. At the same time you can be your own toughest critic but you need to give yourself credit where credit is due, all ones on the scale isn’t a fair evaluation either.

You next need to commit to improving based on your self evaluation. This means that you will seek the information, instruction, mentorship, advice or motivation from someone to help become better. Keep in mind what the definition of insanity is, “Doing the same thing over and over the same way and expecting different results”.

Finally you need to make up your mind that this isn’t going to be a onetime thing, rating yourself needs to be an ongoing process that leads to the same kind of action each time. Doing this one time will possibly make you a little better, but to become GREAT, to become the BEST, to become WORLD CLASS you need to continually improve through inspection and action.

I wouldn’t start by rating myself on the top 100 things I do every day. Like the movie “What About Bob”, you need to take “baby steps”. Pick 5 or 6 actions that you feel will help you the most. I didn’t say things you need the most help with. Pick actions that if improved upon will give you the most growth. The reason you start here is because once you see yourself starting to improve and the improvement brings about positive results you will want to change more. SUCCESS BEGETS SUCCESS!

As you keep adding to your evaluation list you will see that there will be areas that you immediately improve in and areas that you may need to work on for a long time to see any improvement at all. Keep evaluating the process and working the areas that will gain you the most growth.

Be honest, be fair, be persistent, be relentless, and be prepared for the most success you have ever seen.

Lorin