Evaluating Strengths and Weaknesses

Have you ever met someone you thought was good at everything? Did you believe that anything they attempted to do never failed? I'm sure if we think back, we all know someone who falls into this category. In reality, that person does not exist. Every single person has certain strengths and certain weaknesses. Some rare people are extremely good at covering up their weaknesses, but believe me they are still there.

It is very important that you take the time to make a serious evaluation of your overall strengths and weaknesses. You need to evaluate all areas of your personality including mental, physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual attributes. To properly engage in this type of thinking you have to be okay with the fact that you have actual weaknesses, and that some of your perceived strengths may in actuality be weaknesses in disguise. You will derive absolutely no benefit from this exercise if you cannot or are not willing to take a true and honest picture of yourself. I myself am aware of my glaring weaknesses, but sometimes fail to recognize some that obviously exist. That is why a complete and thorough examination is needed to really understand your abilities.

The main benefit from this evaluation is creating opportunities to channel your energy toward your strengths and minimize your exposure to your weaknesses. In simple terms, do what you do best and let others help you with what you do not. Adopting this philosophy will help boost your confidence and reduce your frustrations in both your business and professional life.

Clearly Define Expectations

As a business owner with employees, manager, or anyone else who supervises others I am sure that you have experienced the problem of someone not correctly doing their job. It could have been caused by carelessness, poor attitude, inexperience, or a number of other causes that effect someone's performance. One area we sometimes fail to consider are expectations. Did you properly explain what you expected from someone, or did you just take it for granted they knew what to do? Did you have a system in place that can measure actual results against predetermined objectives? Did you help them through proper training and support to be prepared to meet these expectations? These are questions you have to ask yourself when trying to examine someone's work.

I have managed enough people to know that with some, no matter how much time you spend working with them, they just aren't going to get it. You want to focus your attention on the people who can truly perform the job, but need some additional guidance to get it done right.

I spent most of my career in the wholesaling industry. One of our biggest tasks was to gain additional distribution for our products. We were having tremendous difficulty gaining distribution for a particular brand. Being extremely frustrated at our lack of progress, I immediately blamed our sales people for the problem. When I examined things a little closer, I realized they did not fully understand the company's expectations and there was no system in place to convey them. By developing a set goal, an action plan to achieve that goal, and a tracking system to measure results, each person knew exactly what was expected from them. This was also designed to hold them accountable for their results. The end result was a consistent gain in distribution, leading to a consistent gain in sales.

Take the time up front to make sure someone knows what their job is, how you want it performed, and what results you expect. Creating a system that communicates expectations will have a positive impact on performance. It will also help eliminate some common excuses such as "I did not know that was my job", or the more blatant one, "that's not my job." Once expectations are clearly communicated you pass the responsibility of properly executing work tasks onto their shoulders and off of yours.

Sampling: A Powerful Marketing Tool

I did some work this week with an associate on a marketing plan for a company that is looking to launch a specialty food product. It is the classic story of someone cooking something up in their kitchen, serving it to their friends, and then deciding to try and sell it to the general public. There are thousands of successful products that got started this way. In fact there are quite a few very successful companies that got started this way. The one thing they all have in common, is that they created a product that people liked.

When putting together a plan to market this product, we went over the basic steps that need to be done to get this project off the ground. You have to formulate your pricing strategy, fine tune your packaging and presentation, define your target market, create a promotional plan to support your roll out just to name a few. A vital part of this plan has to be an aggressive sampling program. After all, why did you decide to try and sell this product in the first place; the people who tried it, really liked it.

Sampling is the most cost effective way to promote your product. Your plan should include as many sampling opportunities as possible. Getting your product into people's hands, or mouths is the fastest way to generate interest as well as sales. If people like something they will buy it. Not only will they buy it, they will recommend it to their friends and family. Word of mouth advertising is still the most effective form of advertising there is. Offering to sample your product is also an effective way to gain distribution in outlets where you hope to sell your product. Store owners will be much more willing to carry your product if you agree to conduct some samplings that will encourage sales. Even if you just supply product for the store owner to use as samples, it is a good use of your marketing dollars.

Remember this simple formula; distribution is vital for growing sales, sampling will create demand, and demand will increase distribution. As long as you keep producing a quality product that people enjoy, use sampling to continually fuel the fire of sales growth.