Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life: How to Unlock Your Full Potential for Success and Achievement

IDENTIFY YOUR KEY SKILLS
Each job or desired result can be defined in terms of the key skills
necessary to achieve it. For example, there are seven key result areas
in selling. A weakness in any one of them can hold you back from
selling as much as you can. They are: (1) prospecting; (2) establish-
ing trust and rapport; (3) identifying the customer’s problem or
need; (4) presenting your product or service as the ideal solution to
the problem; (5) answering objections and concerns; (6) getting
agreement to proceed; and (7) obtaining resales and referrals. If you
perform well in all seven of these areas, you will soon be at the top
of your field. If you are poor in any area, your performance in that
area will determine your income.
In management, there are also seven key result areas. They are:
(1) planning; (2) organizing; (3) selecting the right people; (4) dele-
gating; (5) supervising; (6) measuring; and (7) reporting, both up-
ward and downward. If you are excellent at every key skill except
for one, that one weakness alone will hold you back in your career
as a manager.
There are critical success factors in almost every area of life. For
example, there are four critical success factors that determine your
physical health. They are: (1) proper diet; (2) proper weight; (3)
proper exercise; and (4) proper rest. Almost all of your health prob-
lems can be traced back to a problem or deficiency in one of these
four areas.
The starting point of personal excellence is for you to identify
the key result areas of your job. Define them clearly and write them
down. Make a list of the tasks, in order, that you must perform to
get the results expected of you in your job. Evaluate your current