Sales Shebang: Talent and Value - What Cards Are You Playing?
The Sales Shebang kicked off this morning with Faith Ralston [President of Leaps of Faith Consulting and author of Play Your Best Hand] teaching us about Talent Types.
She says everyone has 5-7 talents that they use in predictable sequence for successful outcomes. But, taking it farther, she explains that everyone has a primary talent type and discussed the four types of talent.
Ever wonder why Steve Jobs is such a great visionary? According to Faith, he's a Diamond Talent. This means he's an idea guy. A Diamond Talent loves the blank page and to be at the front-end of a project. A Diamond is an abstract thinker, the ideas just keep coming. These are the folks who can make lemonade from lemons. As a point of interest, we learned that Kim Duke, author of Tickled Pink and a Shebang speaker is also a Diamond Talent.
Bill Gates and the Shebang's founder, Jill Konrath are Club Talents. They get things organized, develop systems and create processes for whatever needs to be done to implement visionary ideas. They have the talent to wrap their arms around the whole concept and see it through to fruition. An example would be the strategic partnerships Bill Gates connected to create Microsoft. And, of course, this conference we're attending that Jill pulled together so wonderfully well.
Margaret Thatcher is a Spade Talent. Spades get out the shovel and dig into the "doing" of things. They will go to the ends of the earth to make sure the goal you give them gets accomplished. They are focused on achieving that end result.
Princess Diana is a Heart Talent. These are the people who care about others and worthy causes. They are the nurturers. Your best customer service people and HR folks are probably Heart Talents.
Faith also talked about five mistakes women make:
- Women don't value their talents highly enough.
- Women don't tend to tell people what they do. They talk about personal issues and don't feel comfortable tooting their own horn.
- Women say yes too quickly. Faith calls this promiscuous head nodding. She reminds us that NO is not a four-letter word and that NO opens the door for 1,000 yes opportunities that are right for you.
- Women take it all on ourselves, heaping it on until they are overwhelmed.
- When women are in over their heads, they just keep going to get through it, instead of asking for help.
Faith talked about the importance of having a personal value proposition and how important it was to find ways to do things everyday that delivered on that - even if it was outside the job.
She was an inspiring speaker for the start of the Sales Shebang and set the tone of possibility that I see pervading the conference attendees. The women and a few great and brave men are enthusiastic, engaged and determined to add a lot of value in all they do. At least that's what I'm seeing.
More to come...stay tuned.
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