Talent-Alone Will Not

Talent-alone will not work!

We all know talented people. Some of us know exceptionally talented people. We ourselves, may be exceptionally talented. Talent in and of itself is a gift and should be categorized as such. Talent-alone is not what your are going to need to get you where you want to go. We were all given a special set of talents from the beginning of our life. Some get bigger doses of talent than others. So what? Talent-alone is not sufficient to achieve lasting and meaningful success. Certainly not the kind of success that helps to build on other successes and establishes a winning pattern. They who rely on talent-alone will achieve the occasional victory, but they do not grow because talent-alone is not a willful act. You don't choose to get talent, you just get it.

Talent does not teach.

When you compliment your talent with your determination and meaningful action you will begin to see just how far you can go if you decide to do so. You will discover that the choices you made to add determination and willpower to your efforts are going to help you achieve much more than your talent-alone.

Look around. The world has a lot of very talented people that are not getting anywhere. Their considerable talent, instead of being a positive, has actually hurt their chances of continued success because they relied too heavily on talent-alone. Their talent "ran out" and they stopped progressing because they had not willingly added anything, such as determination and persistence, to the formula.

You can achieve high levels of success independent of your level of talent, if you do the things that need to be done, consistently.

Do not take talent for granted, it is a gift, and should be treasured. Identify your talents and make the most of what you have been given by getting better everyday. You may discover talents you did not know you had and may have never discovered, if you had not made a decision to do the things necessary to be successful. With or without exceptional levels of talent, you can and deserve to be successful.

Rewarding Bad Behavior

Do not reward bad behavior.

This applies to large companies all the way down to the one-man shop and everyone, in the end, is a one man shop regarding their professional path.

Knowing what to do, how much and when is required for you to achieve desired levels of success. It is always in the doing and learning that builds over time, the experience that will teach you what to do, how much needs doing and by when it needs to be done. Once you are empowered with this vital information, take action by doing what is necessary and do not reward bad behavior by allowing yourself to be distracted or convinced that there is an easier path. You know what needs doing and not making progress, when it is entirely within your control, is in fact, rewarding bad behavior by accepting less than you know you can accomplish. Losing focus or momentum are classic mistakes in business growth and if you allow that to happen, without losing sleep, you are in effect rewarding inappropriate or bad behavior. The reward is in your thinking and accepting that you are going to be okay with a level of achievement that is less than you are capable of. Think again. While the detrimental effect of your underachievement may not surface immediately, it will come back to haunt you and you will either get better or get out. So do not reward bad behavior by accepting less.

Do Things Differently With a Desire to Do Things Better

"There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new." (Niccolo Machiavelli)

Machiavelli was right. The person who boldly introduces a new order of things is too often alone in their quest and also often right in their new order of things. Independent of the level of success ultimately achieved, the necessary and bold change in the order of things will illuminate "some that will and some that will not."

Changes in life or in business are never ending. Change comes in all shapes and sizes.

The opportunity to be a part of positive change is yours to embrace or reject. You may be at the forefront of change in the new order of things and as so, you are most vulnerable. Be prepared for the attacks from those in the organization that do not embrace the opportunity to change. These people are the very ones that change will leave behind. Pay more attention to they who say "I will" than they who say "I will not."

When you commit to a new order of things, stay committed inspite of the uproar you hear from the masses. The unique individual, that seizes the chance to take a positive role in becoming a part of the new order of things, will learn a lot about themselves and about the people around them. It takes just one spark to start a raging fire, you can and should be that spark, at whatever level, you are given the opportunity.

Failure is Required

The tech industry is one of the places you will find many more failures than successes. Some of the failures are colossal. Failure in the tech industry is not only accepted as a the norm it is almost required. The tech industry learned that in their wold they are going to fail before they succeed so the industry understood, on a grand scale, that failures are part of the norm. Because of the willingness to fail and willingness to accept failure as a vital part of success, the tech industry has changed the world.

Failure requires money but money is simply a by-product of success. The moment you start putting too much emphasis on the money is the moment you will likely divert your attention from the challenges of making incremental progress and overcoming the obstacles that are a part of every successful endeavor. Failure requires guts and money. Failure requires commitment, dedication and money. Failure requires efficiencies and money. Failure requires and thrives on persistence and yes, money. All too often we see failure as, a dark spot on our progress, it is anything but that. The very act of failing means you are doing something and doing something is vastly more productive than waiting. The more you experience unique failures, the closer to success you get. Make sure to learn from your failures. Making the same mistake repeatedly, is not failure, it is not paying attention and cannot be accepted.

You cannot make a commitment to succeed , without factoring in the reality that, in order to achieve success, you are going to fail. Failure is a part of the process. Success is all the sweeter the more failure that is mixed in with it.

If I Presented to Me

There is more of an art to making effective presentations than there is a science. You surely must focus on presenting the facts and to a large extent let the facts do the talking. The fine art of presenting includes several vital components that will help to make you a very effective presenter and effective presenters are more successful at whatever their chosen careers. Sales people need to be effective presenters if they are going to help prospects and clients fully understand the value of their proposition. There is only one way to get better at presenting and that is to make more presentations. Start by making the presentation to yourself, in front of a mirror. Score your presentation based on:

1. How much of a command do you have of what you are proposing?

If you stumble through the facts, you need to acquire a deeper knowledge of your offer. Clients and prospects do not need to dedicate time to helping you get a better grasp of your offering. Know before you go.

2. Are you fluid without being too slick.

Decision makers will be interested in your presentation if it makes sense on a step by step basis. It must be fluid, but it cannot be slick to the point of being cavalier or disengaged.

3. Is there clarity?

One of the biggest mistakes is to assume people will understand simply because you do. People need time to process what you're saying while you visually present, so don't assume they understand enough to make a positive decision without your help in delivering a clear message.

4. Are you allowing time during your presentation for questions.

In acting they call it, dramatic pause. That is the time between dialogue that is given so the audience can fully digest the point being made. You need to pace yourself and pause during the presentation so you can give the person the time to process what you just said.

5. Do you exhibit a professional image?

You must be professional in your dress and the hard-copy documents you leave behind and very professional during the presentation.

These are only a few of the artistic things you need to consider while you endeavor at becoming a great and effective presenter. Practice by presenting to yourself and others in the controlled environment of your team.

There is no one-thing

Especially when times get tough, companies, organizations and individuals, in their effort to turn things around quickly, will often look for the one-dramatic-thing they can do to make life better. Unfortunately, because they become so myopic by virtue of concentrating the majority of their resources on the one-thing, they do not spend much time or energy on the many things that attributed to their success in the first place.

Successful businesses and individuals made their success by doing many things well. Therefore when things get tough, it defies logic to begin the search for the one-thing that will reverse the slide. It is just not that simple. Unfortunately many companies and businesses do look for and find one-thing that they think will make the difference and then push hard and fast in implementing and executing based on their belief that if they do the one-thing well, all will turn out well.

In his book, How The Mighty Fall, author Jim Collins uses research to chronicle the fall of some industry giants. Most of the failures were self-inflicted and many of the companies that did fail, were guilty of looking for, and finding, that one-thing, that they just knew would serve as the fulcrum to tip the scales back in their favor. They did not find such a thing because it does not exists.

What happened is, they stopped doing the many things that made them successful, or they did not adjust to the changing business environment quickly enough and after they realized it, it was too late. They had invested untold fortunes and human resources in the one-thing, only to discover that if they had begun to look at everything, they could have corrected course by making several improvements and probably survived and maybe thrived.

Distinguish Yourself

In order to succeed at higher and higher levels, you are going to have to distinguish yourself from the crowd and distinguish yourself from your former self. There is only one way to continually justify your existence in the professional world and that is to get better every day at what you do. The only way to get better is to make sure you are utilizing your time wisely and making the best of the lessons you learn from your efforts.

How to distinguish yourself is a matter of looking at the things that you and your leadership measure and manage. Once you have clearly identified the things that are measured and managed, simply decide which one of those activities and behaviors will, if you got better at it, would have the greatest impact on your positive performance. Then concentrate a significant amount, if not most, of your time on improving your performance in that targeted area.

Distinguish yourself by:

Making more calls

Increasing your revenue average by individual clients

Sell more to more

Make more presentations

Increase the number of contracts or commitments

Read more books

There is a great time to start and that time is now.

Colonel Sanders was sixty five when his first restaurant failed due to traffic construction which was, of course, beyond his control. That was when he decided to distinguish himself by taking to the road and talking to potential franchisees. The rest is a distinguished history.