Be Yourself. It’s Simple but not Natural

***Business is about relationships.

***Don’t take it personally. It’s only business.

***The most important thing is to discover your clients’ actual needs.

***A good salesperson can get anyone to “need” his/her product. 

***Become an expert in the product or service you offer. Knowledge is everything.

***Sales skills are universal. If you’re good at it, you can sell anything. 

The business world is full of self-contradictory B.S. The more seminars you attend, books you read and webinars you log on to, the more confusing and difficult it is to be successful. I’ve been in business for several years now, and I’ve come to a realization: Of the hundreds of “influencers” I’ve followed and thousands of articles and books I’ve read, the only ones that really contribute to my success in any long term or meaningful way eschew the formulaics listed above and concentrate instead on the ol’ trite but true axiom “Be yourself.”

It’s not as easy as it sounds. It’s in our nature to watch the behavior of other professionals and try to emulate them. That high-billing salesman you gaze at with jealousy or that oft-promoted manager you see rise through the ranks of the company are surely using some secret that you can steal to become everything you want to be! In the end, that thinking is futile. Beyond standard traits that one should expect from anyone in the workplace: punctuality, hard work, focus, attention to detail, collaboration ...it’s certain that the coworker you admire so much has something — probably many things — that you don’t have. And that’s OK. It’s those traits which are unique to each one of us that make us successful as individuals and as professionals. 

Know who you are. BE who you are. Success will follow. 

Years ago, I was a radio deejay who hosted a morning drive show, and if I do say so myself, nobody worked harder than me. In the beginning I attended every community event, booked hundreds of guests, studied all the greats with the goal of BEING them (Rick Dees was my favorite!) but I never really achieved more than a modicum of recognition. It was frustrating. Then gradually something amazing happened. As I became more comfortable on the air and I began to relax and be myself — I noticed that more people started calling in to the show, more people came up to meet me at remote broadcasts and I became more recognizable to more people around town. 

I learned the same lesson years later when I went into the business end of radio and began toiling on the marketing side, working with advertisers to increase their business. My first (wrong) instinct was to mimic the activities of the most successful salesperson on our staff. Needless to say, I failed miserably. I just wasn’t HIM, pure and simple. It wasn’t until I relaxed and found my own voice that I started to create positive results for my clients and my account list began to swell. 

How simple, and yet how difficult. Be yourself.