We all think a lot about differentiators in respect of the solutions and services we sell and our position in the marketplace.  But what differentiates you?  What makes you indispensable?  We know that you are a sales god, driving home deals and bringing in the numbers, but guess what, so is Bob down the corridor; so are a lot of people.  It’s great that you bring in the business and nothing can replace that, but these days you need more if you are going to get on (by the way, if you’re happy bringing in the numbers and have no ambitions beyond selling and making a lot of commission, that’s fine, but there will come a time when you’re after that dream job and all of the other candidates are as good as you – you’ll still need to differentiate).

Business Creativity and You

No longer can you turn up, do your job and expect your career to grow.  As a good sales person, good results will help you to keep a job, but to climb the ladder you need to stand out.

An excellent start, to get you in the mindset, is Seth Godin’s new book Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?  The latest in a long line of excellent books by one of the interweb’s most popular bloggers, this book really sets the tone in terms of what is required to stand out from the crowd.

Whatever you do, check out these Linchpin links:

• The Linchpin Manifesto
• The Linchpin Posts
• Linchpin Audio Book Extract One: You are a Genius
• Linchpin Audio Book Extract Two: Surrounded by Bureaucrats

Linchpin is all about being creative, which, if it doesn’t come naturally to you, will require practice.  Creativity is not just about poetry and flower arranging, it’s about coming up with new ways of doing old things, solving problems in a way that other people haven’t thought of.  It’s a powerful tool for the differentiator.  You take the initiative, you drive change, you create new visions of old work, you give more and you get more.

But you have to start somewhere.  A great way to get going with creativity, is to learn to mindmap.  It’s a tool that I use all the time whether I’m writing for The Seller or trying to work out a new direction for a campaign.  And best of all, it’s easy.

• What is mind mapping anyway?
• And how do I use it?
• Free mind mapping software

You can even use mind mapping to increase the amount of information you retain from reading. A great book you might want to apply this to, to help you with your creativity, is ‘The Creative Habit’ by Twyla Tharp, an excellent guide to developing creativity and retaining it for life.

Finally, there are loads of management tools that you can use to help you analyse all kinds of situations.  Some of them are complex, but many of them are very simple to use, just dive right in there and have a go.  You’ll learn far more by doing.  You can find a great learning resource for all manner of mind tools here.

So, get out there, develop your creativity, apply it and become a Differentiator – but don’t blame me when you’re indispensable.

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I know we’ve said it time and time again, and it sounds trite, but there is a lot of truth in the old mantra that, if you don’t know where you’re going, you can’t know how to get there. Here are some helpful links to inspire your planning of sales and personal success for 2010 and some advice on how to make the most from high-impact New Year’s resolutions.

• Are you motivated to get the best from next year?  A Productive Seller favourite, ZenHabits answers your top 20 questions on getting motivated and overcoming bad habits.
• Are the people around you helping or hindering your success? Now is the time to decide.
• Think about changing your working processes (trust me, process is a critical success factor, the other is activity) and becoming a more productive seller.
• Take an opportunity to think about your brand and how it is affecting your success.
• Explore ways to improve your sales effectiveness that you may have overlooked in the past.
• Get above the clutter.

High-impact New Years Resolutions

What you are looking to create for your New Years resolution is a list of top level projects (like “expand into European market”) that are underpinned by actionable items (like “write advert for French speaking telemarketer”). If you can’t sit down and do it, it isn’t an actionable item. e.g. “Write Novel” is not an actionable item, it is a project. “Research Babynames.com for main character first name” is an actionable item: providing you have the time, energy and resources available, you can begin an actionable item immediately.

The reason I mention this and underpin it with repeated examples, is that so many resolutions are broken because they contain no substance, hence are not actionable. “Get Fit” is far easier a resolution to break than “Attend gym on Monday and Thursday evenings for 1 hour workout”, providing you have – of course – defined the items that will make up your workout!

Essentially, start broad and then focus on details.  Keep the above at the front of your mind and you can’t go wrong.

Merry Christmas and a Happy and Prosperous New Year to all of you.

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If you’re not at one with GTD, I suggest that you check it out forthwith. Sample these excerpts from David’s newest book, ‘Making it all Work’ as a free taster.

And if that’s whet your whistle, here is a video of David talking to the boffins at Google. It’s quite long, but very informative, and of great use to us Productive Sellers.

I’ve used GTD principles as part of my personal productivity system for years. Where the challenge comes is in adapting the framework of GTD to meet your individual needs and to work with the technology that you have available. I’ll post shortly with some free on-line resources to help you manage everything, but for now here is a technologically agnostic tutorial from GTD Times to get you started on GTD for salespeople.

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Just a quick word on Twitter and social networking in general. I’ll definitely be talking more about how you can use these resources to define your personal brand (another subject that we will be looking into very soon), raise your profile and win more clients, but for now take a look at this excellent article from the Community Marketing Blog.

Although you may want to reconsider, as apparently “over-heavy Twitter use will make you cold, cynical and facile – ultimately leaving you heartless and dead inside.”

Also, you (morally bereft!) productive sellers with aspirations of Boardroom greatness, may be interested in this funky little tool, which keeps you up-to-date with the Tweets of top business executives.

Finally for this week, with all the doom and gloom around the recession, it’s a great time to return to productivity basics and think about what positive Psychology can do for your business. (Does productivity drive positivity or is it the other way around?!)

Next week we’ll be looking more at the science of presentations and how you can use it to win more business.  In the meantime here’s a completely unrelated snippet about poo as a weapon that made me laugh.

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