One of the biggest challenges salespeople and their leaders face is how to navigate their own careers.
This is especially true during times of market uncertainty and transition when the decision to explore new options is something you either increasingly contemplate or is forced upon you. Maybe you’re not happy where you are and are looking to take your skills elsewhere. Or maybe you’ve thought about starting your own business one day.
The challenge when it comes to architecting your ideal career is two-fold:
Great careers aren’t designed, they unfold: it’s hard to architect the career of your dreams from day one.
Like drunken college students, we often stumble through finland telegram data our careers, moving from one role to the next, making the best choices we can along the way. Keeping your eyes open, working hard, and leaping to opportunities that excite us is always a better strategy than a preordained master plan that leaves no room for improvisation.
What we think we want isn’t what we actually want: in his book Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less (one of my favorite sales reads), author Greg McKeown states that our vision for the future is often shaped by the forces around us rather than our true desires.
I see this all the time in talented Sales professionals earlier on in their careers. The desire to get promoted, make more money, and sell to larger, more complex customers is fuelled by seeing their colleagues seemingly strive for the same goal. Secretly, however, many yearn for a different path.
While infidelity is a characteristic that’s typically frowned upon, I’ve found it’s the perfect lens through which to look at career progression. So when you’re not sure what move to make next, cut through the noise by asking yourself this simple but powerful focusing question:
“What job could you be offered today that you would immediately and without hesitation, quit your current job to pursue?”