The everyday life of an independant professional is characterized through project work or consulting, administration and various sales activities to keep or to improve your position in your professional environment. Focussed self-marketing is one of the upcoming challenges in the work environment in the 21th century.

Have you ever thought about your personal value proposition which makes you as a person more interesting than the others in your competition for new projects? Work it out! It helps you spending time on sales activities with the highest chance to close a deal and at the end of the day the highest chance to increase your productivity:

• What is your customer aiming to achieve?
• Why does your customer need to act?
• What are the critical success factors for your customer?
• What is your solution?
• What are the benefits for your customer (measurable if possible)?
• And at the end: Why you and not anyone else?

If you don´t find a clear and transparent answer to one of this 6 questions – spend your time on more promising sales possibilities. It saves time and increases your efficency.

“Setting goals is an extremely powerful technique for accomplishment, but it requires more then just writing down what you want to achieve”. That is a true statement. It can be quite a challenging task, but if goals are defined clearly, it is more easy to implement them. Most of us know how difficult it can be to set up goals and objectives.

In order to support you with this challenging task, Paul Christenbury has defined in his article different steps that will help to define and achieve goals with more success. The most effective guidelines in goal setting is probably the advice to set SMART goals. Setting SMART goals means that they should be…

- Specific
- Measurable
- Action-oriented
- Realistic
- Time and Resources Constrained

This formula is not a new invention, but it definitely helps to come your “dream” a bit closer. Goals should be clear and specific, so that we know what we are striving for. Furthermore, they need to be measurable in order to check if the goal has been reached or not. The goal should be action-oriented and realistic, so that it can be put into practice. Time and resources constrained means that a definite deadline for completion should be scheduled and furthermore, only limited resources are available.

It is fact, that some goals are easier to achieve then others. Maybe because they are only short-term oriented or easier to realize – I do not know. Nevertheless, we should face the goals we have set, especially the challenging ones. In order to simplify the process and be able to accomplish the goal, Paul Christenbury suggests to break goals down to manageable steps. And I think he is right. It is easier to go small steps to achieve a goal rather then taking a big step. Think about it.

Furthermore it is important to keep track and constantly review and re-assess the goals that have been set. Keep your goals in mind, and you will stay on track.

Jetzt haben wir es wieder schriftlich.
Wie die Wirtschaftwoche im Weblog Jo\’s Jobwelt berichtet, sind wir Deutschen Weiterbildungsmuffel. Eine repräsentative Umfrage des Vereins „Weiterbildung Hamburg“ (1002 bundesweit Befragte) und Forsa hat ergeben, dass nur 31% innerbetriebliche Weiterbildungsmaßnahmen nutzen. Und sogar nur 20% ihre Weiterbildung selbst in die Hand nehmen.

Aber woran liegt es? Hört man doch immer wieder, dass sich viele als Ziel setzten, sich weiterzubilden. Warum hapert es dann also in der Umsetzung?

• Machen wir es uns in unserer Komfortzone gemütlich?
• Wissen wir nicht so genau worin wir uns weiterbilden sollen?
• Oder fehlt uns einfach der entscheidende Motivator?

Wir wissen, dass es wichtig ist seinem Gehirn Nahrung zu geben und seinen Horizont zu erweitern. So wird man kreativer und produktiver. Schafft sich neue Alleinstellungsmerkmale im Beruf und behauptet sich langfristig im Markt.

Also, warum nicht einfach den ersten Schritt setzen. Denn irgendwie hört sich das an, als müsste man nur seinen inneren Schweinehund überwinden.