Sales Moves

By Jeffrey Gitomer

Are you the best you can be? The answer to this question may be the most important in your career. Not just for your job, but to advance your life and yourself.

Think about the people you admire. They are probably people you like to (or would like to) hang around.

If you admire some sports celebrity or some screen star, it is because of their talent. It is because they are “best” at what they do. They have become attractive because of their talent and so can you.

Behind all people who have great talent is an ethic of hard work, dedication and practice. Once they achieve their status, their success follows—and so can yours.

As you attempt to advance your career, the key element is how good you are at what you do. If you want to get to the top of the ladder, then develop the top talent you need to move up each step.

A ladder is the analogy most often used because becoming best is a step-by-step process. (Otherwise they would have used an elevator as the analogy.)

Early in my career, a mentor taught me about experts. He said there were three kinds of experts: an expert, a world-class expert and the world-class expert.

That was February 1994. Since then, I’ve been on a mission to become “the best”—the world-class expert—at what I do.

What is your mission?

If you are in sales, how you become recognized by others will determine not only how they treat you, but also how they are willing to interact with you, build relationships with you, buy from you, be loyal to you, refer others to you and give testimonials for you.

If your customers do not consider you “best,” then they will try their best to lower your price or simply buy from someone else.

And it is no different in any other job function. Your level of perceived expertise will determine how others interact with you and how others treat you.

I have become the best at what I do by reading, thinking, observing, speaking and writing. So can you.

Most people are focused on doing their job, getting in good with their boss, making their monthly quotas, increasing annual revenues, completing a project, getting a raise, maybe making the president’s club.

All of those are OK goals. But none of them have the word “best” at their core.

Are you the best in your company at what you do? If not, why? An even harder question: What are you doing about it?

Best does not only apply to your job or your profession. Best also applies to your role as friend, dad or mom, husband or wife.

If you are doing your best, eventually you will become the best. You may not see your own growth because you are too close to it.

Take a moment and look back over the past few years. Have you grown? Have you gotten better?

The answer is probably “yes.” But the real question is: To what degree? Could you have done more? Did you only do what you had to do to get by?

Here is an easier way to ask that question: Which did you spend more time at: reading or watching television?

I doubt that you will ever win an award as the Best Television Watcher in Town. (Even though you may be qualified.)

The only reason best is elusive is that, at its core, it is hard work.

And as you read this, if you are doing the “dance of justification” (telling yourself how great you are or “could have been better if it wasn’t for…”), you are only denying yourself the opportunity to move from satisfaction, to success, to fulfillment.

The satisfied ones always make it by. The good ones are always successful. The best are always fulfilled.

If you’re looking for the best job, the easiest way to get it is by being the best person.

Jeffrey Gitomer, author of The Sales Bible and The Little Red Book of Selling, is the president of Charlotte-based Buy Gitomer. E-mail him at salesman@gitomer.com.

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