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Become Massively Competent
Any feeling of incompetence we have, may be an alarm of realization that change is needed. We may not believe it’s required but it should still be considered. Competency can be improved many ways and will always benefit us.

What’s Your Current Edge for Development?
This article challenges you with a single question: What is the one skill area—at this point in your career—where improving your competency will have the greatest impact on your overall effectiveness in your job? Your response will guide your continuous development this year.
Change is a Fact of Life --- Six Keys That Make a Difference
Without change your company becomes stagnant, uncompetitive and boring. A leader's major responsibility is to create change, instigate change and then manage change effectively. In spite of the fact that creating change is a key competency required to be an effective leader, most people resist change. This includes leaders themselves. However, effective leaders accept change as a positive force and they are able to convince those that follow them that change is nothing more than a roadmap to a new and better destination. How do these leaders minimize that natural born resistance to change?

Beware the Wannabees
In nature, many creatures have copied the characteristics of other more beneficial organisms. Insects and animals copying color patterns are all wannabees in the natural world. This phenomenon is not unique to the animal world and is very common in the world of business. If something is perceived as successful, imitators are quick to appear and may even be hard to differentiate from the original source. We see this in business plans, logos, products and even training. Once successful, others are certainly going to follow. The very rules of nature apply to the everyday challenge your business faces. This path of least resistance is similar to following a trail through the jungle that was blazed by the hard work and creativity of others.
(Another) Six Competencies to Covet
Hope the first six-pack was useful. Here are six more traits to acquire in your Competency Coveting journey....

The Agile Leader: Adaptability
Adaptability – the ability to change (or be changed) to fit new circumstances – is a crucial skill for leaders, and an important competency in emotional intelligence. Here are 8 tips to consider in your quest for adaptability.

Your Sales and Sales Management Questions Answered - Part 2
In an article last week, I provided the post to a sales competency contest. The final question in that survey asked the participants for any sales issues they needed help with. Today I'll answer the first four of those questions below:
The Fine Art of Dealing with Dominant People
Direct, decisive, determined, domineering. These are just some of the words that describe a highly dominant personality. Everyone knows one. You might even be one. Dominant people are the leaders, the pioneers, the risk-takers. Companies are run by them, wars are led by them, innovation follows in their wake. These are the people that we look to lead us where we might not otherwise go. If you are lucky, you will work for one. If you are really lucky, their office will be in another state. Yes, dominant people are the ones we love to hate, or at least hate to talk to (notice that I did not mention listening as a strong point). Get off on the wrong foot with one and your career can take an unwelcome sidetrack. Have them on your side and you have a strong champion. So how can you effectively communicate with such a power personality?
Points to consider for International Franchise Expansion
Expanding an already successful franchise overseas can be a great way to develop an already successful national franchise. However, careful consideration must be given to ensure your franchise is ready and prepared for unfamiliar markets.
9th of the 10 Kurlan Sales Competencies That are Key to Building a Sales Culture
All of the stuff they have been doing, including the order in which they have been doing it, is usually wrong when we begin working with them - and permanently so. It's harder to stop doing the permanent stuff than it is to learn a more effective way. Think of an elastic band. The information from the new lesson stretches the band a lot. Then the natural tendency to do what has become permanent snaps the band back into its original shape. Solution?

7th of the 10 Kurlan Sales Competencies that are Key to Building a Sales Culture
Salespeople love to present options. It makes them feel like they have more chances to win the business. It's such a popular approach that it's one of the few parts of the sales process that is universally accepted and named. You know it as Good, Better and Best. Companies actually have alignment on Good, Better and Best, sometimes using it in their retail stores and catalogs to provide category options. How many times have salespeople presented you with 3 options? Just last week, I was presented with 3 options at the Lexus Dealer where I got my LS460.
What is the Advantage of Being an MBA?
The importance of MBA degree lies in the fact that it is the confirmed ticket to the corporate world. Many more aspirants are taking new and advanced courses in MBA to accelerate their career growth so that they inculcate the much needed management expertise and business acumen. A mere mention of an MBA rank adds value and weight to one’s resume which gives an edge over others.

Celebrities and the Sales Force
Here I introduce the 7th in a series of articles, The Celebrity Series, 11 articles about famous people and the analogies to the sales force.
The Importance of Empathy in the Workplace
An article of 1210 words describing empathy as an ability to connect and relate with others in building and managing healthy relationships.
A Reliable Predictor of Job Performance
Predicting who will be a top performer is the Holy Grail of the hiring process. There are so many variables that drive job success, however, that hiring managers frequently drop any pretense of a scientific approach and end up trusting their gut. Unfortunately this can reject viable candidates and produce a "cloning effect" (hiring in your own image).

Staff Training : The Process
Beyond the technical task of implementing a new EMR system, you will be required to train your staff to use it well. Here is a working strategy for preparing a training plan to successfully bring your employees into the next generation.
Franchise Development Pro's Let's Use the Same Dictionary!
A very well meaning Director of Franchise Sales and a counterpart on the Internet attempting to draw advertising and leads for them just wrote about their "risk resistant" business. Rubbish (And, if you want a great recession resistant company get back to me...it has something to do with Rubbish!) I think we are all using the same vocabulary (we all use the word "risk") but different dictionaries. (I love the concept talked about, Spring Green, for the right market and the right candidate...but not just any candidate with the hope of "risk-resistance".)

Ten Commandments of Leadership-Not Being a Wimp
Wimp. Wiener. Coward. Spineless. Jellyfish. And more not fit to print. All are words used to describe someone who lacks courage. The courage to do the right thing. The courage to confront. The courage to object. The courage to take risks. The courage to take a different path. All of these are needed characteristics of effective and winning leadership. In all types of settings and in all organizational structures, leaders need courage and, more importantly, the good judgment when to utilize courage and when to stand down. As important as courage is, the ability to not fight a battle is equally important.

BEING THE BEST MEANS CREATING A SELF MANAGING CULTURE
Self Management is the #1 Competency of Successful cultures and of successful people. Take a look at any top performers or top companies and the clues to their success are evident. They make and keep commitments, are self driven, and focus on the value the bring to those they serve and those they work with. Managers coach through meaningful conversations and walk their talk.

Competency Based Interviewing
An article that explains the benefits of Competency Based Interviewing
Top 20 Reasons to Write a Press Release
Any marketer will tell you that publicity is more effective than advertising for creating visibility for your business. And dollar for dollar, publicity is usually the least expensive way to get your name in the paper.
The cost of poor sales selection
Have you ever done the math on how much sales recruitment costs you, especially when you get it wrong? If you are like most managers then chances are you haven't. So let's consider the costs, overt and covert, involved in sales recruitment. If you don't know it already, sales recruitment is one of the toughest assignments around.
Effective Business Communication and Writing Skills Can Lead To Greater Productivity
Imagine workplace communication where expectations are clear and business writing skills are valued. That equates with productivity because the back and forth of editing and rewriting and revising is kept to a minimum. Effective communication should be an essential part of any business training aimed at improving efficiency.
Effective Business Communication Connects Brevity and Clarity, and Media Training That Works
Just because you're practicing business communication doesn't mean you have to lean on cliches and hackneyed phrases. Effective communication training that stresses the link between brevity and clarity leads to business writing skills that honor your readers. A key element of media training is to learn the importance of "bridging" -- the technique of nudging aggressive reporters back to your message. That sort of effective communication is standard practice for successful politicians, and with media training you can learn to do it as well.

180 and 360 Degree Assessments for the Sales Force
There are not a lot of companies that undertake 180 degree or 360 degree assessments of the sales force and that's a good thing because there are so many limitations. The 180 - The salesperson or sales manager does a self-rating on the predetermined competencies and attributes and the individual's boss conducts the same ratings. The 360 - The sales manager does a self-rating on the predetermined competencies and attributes and both the sales manager's boss and the salespeople that report to the sales manager conduct the same ratings. So the 180 and the 360 are nearly the same except for the number of people and the vertical depth. What are the limitations?
Interview Questions To Find The Peak Performing Sales Rep.
Use an interviewing process to narrow the field of candidates from 100 down to 4, but ask this one question to identify the candidate that will most likely become one of your peak performing sales people.
Calculating How To Charge
This is how my friend Rick Schilling does when he tells people how much he will charge for his service.
Create a Think Tank & Create a Business Revolution
In this article, Rosemary Rein, Ph.D links the pain of the current economic crisis with the potential of major business revolutions occurring during “an economic tsunami”. Rosemary also provides 10 tips for bringing a creative climate of year-round innovation to your organization.
Are you ready for the Self Managing Salesman?
What would it be like to have a group of self motivated, self managed Salespeople on your team. How to get and keep the focus on the pure pleasure of meeting and delivering to challenges with people who are 'wired' that way. Not only is it possible, in many cases it is necessary. Here's what it can be like and a little bit about how to get there!
Don't Select the Route before You Know the Destination
Goal-setting is a critically important skill that's necessary for success. However, it's not the most important one.
When You Stand at the Turning Point
"Taking Care of Business" may be exactly the wrong thing to do when it's all about to come undone. In this economy, that could be tomorrow!
10 mistakes retailer make while choosing Retail management software
Choosing a retail management system is no time for experimentation. Don't make these mistakes when you buy Retail management software.
Creating a Leadership Development Agenda That Works
Companies invest heavily to develop leadership talent necessary to grow the organization. Most of this investment provides little return. After using conventional approaches for 15 years as a psychologist, human resources professional and change agent and finding little benefit, the author developed a new set of guidelines to develop leadership talent. This article provides five principles to grow talent.

Don't stop learning
The importance of staying informed about your business
How to Position Your Company in the Minds of Consumers
In most industries there are no heroes, just choices. So rather than try to be all things to all people, business owners need to proactively position their company and define their points of differentiation to the consumer. Positioning draws the attention of your target market and reduces the chance that your competitors will define who you are, a situation no business owner wants to experience.

Stand Out and Get Noticed: 10 Tips On How to Win Over the Potential Client
In this tough economy, entrepreneurs must use every tool they have to win the client. Your best tool is yourself. How you appear, behave and communicate influences your rate of success. "Stand Out and Get Noticed" provides you with 10 tips on how to appear, behave and communicate to win the client.
BEYOND CONVENTIONAL SELLING
Having just returned from Copenhagen where I've been working with my favourite client; I realised that between us we have created an oil company version of 'The Tipping Point'. Essentially, you could describe this as an insatiable learning epidemic that is beginning to invade the entire global organisation and the reason for this success is so obvious, so simple that anyone could do this.
Work Skills Transcend Cultures Work Habits May Not
Since Chally is strongly established internationally, we're often asked what has to be done to alter the testing for different cultures around the world. For the past six years, we have been tracking performance on a Chally assessment versus actual performance on the job across many countries. Our goal was to develop a research database that would highlight differences that were based on geography or culture. For our comparisons internationally, we chose geographic, cultural, and economic regions that were very different. These included England, Sweden, Denmark, India, Indonesia, Australia, South Africa, Mexico and French Canada. The results were somewhat surprising, but very logical. Our research results provided clear evidence that the skill and competency scores are stable and equally applicable across cultures all over the world.

Office Politics: Survival of the Savvy
Tales of political sabotage, power plays and turf wars are part of any organization’s history. Nonetheless, political competence is the one skill everyone wishes to have more of — but no one talks about it.
Coaching Action Plan for Sales Managers
Have your people set specific goals and connect with them regularly to maintain accountability. Always leave people with action steps, goals and deliverables.
Getting To Your Personal and Professional Best
"Living your best personal and professional life" is a goal means different things to different people. On your journey to "living your best," you have a powerful choice of three levels of commitment and engagement in your personal and professional life.

Effective Personal Leadership
When we combine personal competency in all areas of leadership skills with an organizational culture which supports people, their development, and their success, we end up with exceptional leadership which, in turn, inspires the best effort in others.
Lead Generation = Dollar Creation
All businesses are built on two areas of competency – people skills and marketing skills. Many sales people who are more than adequate in their sales and people skills are struggling today. The reason is most sales people lack enough opportunities with customers. Lead generation = dollar creation.
UNDERSTANDING YOUR ROLE AS LEADER
The purpose of this article is to help you develop an awareness of your role as a leader. Unlike the typical role of a manager, leaders are expected to have a greater impact. Knowing how effective leaders think and act can help you the manager communicate more effectively with the key leaders in your organization and also communicate the desires of the leader to those who report to you.

Other competency Related Articles

Selling A Competency or a Responsibility
Is selling a competency reserved for those with "sales" in their titles or is it a responsibility of everyone in the organization? Top performing companies see selling as a competency important to everyone in leadership or a position of influence.

Accounts Receivable Factoring: It’s More Than Just the Money
The concept of "core competency" refers to the things done by a business that lie at the heart of its ability to manufacture a product or deliver a service. From a management standpoint, employees should spend as much time as possible working on tasks that contribute directly to the business's core competencies. Since managing accounts receivable isn't a core competency for most companies, many rely on accounts receivable factoring companies to handle their accounts receivable functions. Read about how one company began factoring its accounts receivable in order to improve cash flow and soon discovered that factoring services offer additional benefits as well.
LEADERSHIP IS INSIDE-OUTSIDE
A potential leader requires solid knowledge that comes only from inside and he should have competency to complete the things internally. The whole earth is following the principle of ‘Inside-Outside’. Competency is also created inside and bringing it outside up to 100 per cent is leadership. Leadership is always performance, never position and always regardless of power.
The Foundations of a Strategic Competency System for Leadership Development
Nurturing competency in leadership becomes “strategic” when organizational objectives match the competency development required to achieve them, and, the efforts are coordinated with human resources.
Commodity Value Proposition - An Oxymoron?
How do you find your value proposition when everything you do and everything you sell seems to border on being a commodity because everybody is trying to do the same thing to create competitive advantage? “Oh, but we’re different. We sell our World Class Service.” Right ………………………. How many companies do you know that don’t say they have world class service. Many say that servicing the customer is their core competency. If they truly do have world class service, service is not their core competency it’s what they are doing to create and maintain that level of service that is their true core competency.
Framework for Competency-based Management
This framework provides a set of specifications for the development and implementation of competency profiles, tools and mechanisms in support of career management, learning and development, succession planning, recruitment, performance management and staffing.

The framework covers:
• Why competency-based human resource management is implemented;
• The structure for the development of competency profiles, including how jobs are clustered into career streams for competency profiling purposes.
Mentoring and Millennials
According to Bob Canalosi, chief learning officer of General Electric Health Care, a top leadership competency needed in the 2020 workplace is to be a “legendary builder of people and teams.” Canalosi explains this as “coaching and mentoring both face-to-face and virtually; challenging people to achieve more than they believed they could.” Marshall Goldsmith, executive educator and coach, also predicts that a top competency for leaders of the future will be “sharing leadership.”
When The Leader Speaks...
When great leaders speak, things happen! People become engaged. Teams gel. Customers are served. Problems are solved and products are invented. Such is the power of a leader’s communication. So important is communication that it is difficult to find a leadership text that does not devote a significant portion of its pages to the topic. Unfortunately, most such works present communication as simply another important leadership competency up there with project management and strategic thinking. Communication is not a leadership competency; it is your leadership. Leadership and communication are synonymous; virtually all of one’s leadership is manifest through communication. As James C. Humes wrote: “Every time you speak, you are auditioning for leadership.”

Sales Traction - The Key to Measuring the Number 1 Sales Competency
How can you truly measure the number one Sales Competency? Traction.

The seven essential willabilities of real leadership
I have been convinced for some time that many people have the skills of real leadership and yet very few have the will. Skill without will is a ship without a rudder. Competency (ability) is useless without commitment (will). By combining them together in remarkable ways we bring our true character to everything we do and demonstrate our true capability. I call this willability. In preparation for some upcoming mentoring assignments I created the concept of willability in order to emphasise for my clients that commitment is really what makes competency worthwhile. There are seven essential willabilities of real leadership.
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