7 Part Sales E-Course
Lesson 7: It's All About You
Accountability is something we all talk about. We know it's the foundation for completing tasks, yet we also recognize that accountability is something lacking in too many organizations and lives.
In Lesson 7 I'll give you some techniques to build accountability into your business and life.
It really is all about you! How you deal with your personal and professional life depends upon you. You control your time (that's right...you), your money, your responsibilities and most of the things that go on in your life. Maybe not the price at the pump, but what you drive (or don't drive) is decided by the person you see when you shave, brush your hair or put on your make-up.
There's an assessment I sometimes use in my training courses that measures your Locus of Control. It reflects how you view the things that go on around you or happen to you. Some of us have a high Internal Locus of Control, meaning we take personal responsibility and accountability for things that happen to us and some folks have a high External Locus of Control which translates into a belief that things that happen come from the outside and are beyond personal responsibility and accountability.
A tsunami would fall under an External Locus of Control. The fact that you didn't get off the coast when you heard that it was coming...that's Internal.
Hopefully, you see where I'm going with this. The President of my international division in the last lesson - she final had to own up to her Internal Locus of Control.
Obviously there's a measure of both External and Internal in all of us. But ultimately, in our day-to-day lives we have to take control of what happens to our families, our organizations and us.
Take time to schedule your day - in writing. Make lists of your priorities and cross them off as they're completed (as I will do once I finish Lesson 7...I really will). And put completion dates, meeting dates, accountabilities of team members (of course it's up to you to pick the right person for the right job), resource allocations, smaller task deadlines, and so on, on your projects and have everyone involved review the outline and sign it! A project without guidelines is like a city without access roads - you know it's there, but how do you get to it?
If you're a salesperson, use monthly goal sheets, weekly cookbooks and long term goals matrices to help fulfill your objectives...and show them to someone. Now you HAVE to do something about them!
Being in control helps you realize that you can do what you set out to do (remember the story about setting an agenda in Lesson 6). It's a mindset that starts with understanding who you are, being non-judgmental in your views of others, using that knowledge to achieve effective relationships, and taking that to the level of growing your sales, teams and organization.