What is your purpose in your small business, sales or marketing career?
Purpose. Story. Brand. We’re hearing and seeing these words a lot lately. Why?
Because it’s basic human nature for us to seek meaning in everything we do. When you look at the typical entrepreneur, small business owner, sales and marketing professional you see people who seek purpose at an extremely high level. Having purpose is cool these days. It’s always been miserable for any human to not have purpose. But these days it seems, it’s all the rage for people to “be on purpose.” It is for me!
Have you ever not had purpose? Perhaps you, like me at one time, were lost in the dark, clueless as what you wanted to do with your life. I have. It was not good. Just ask my wife of 30 years. She really knows.
Your best people and my best people in sales and marketing seek purpose. Thank goodness for this! Who else would be so bold as do dare to be different from the rest of the world? These are the same people who often deliver the best creative results, your top sales performers, the people who you’d love to fire most days, but can’t because they add too much value to the team and they get results.
These are the people who seek to harness their true purpose. They know what they want because they either got lucky or they searched long and hard and got banged up along the way to find purpose. That’s why they take so little BS from anybody. They fear little. They carved their own path. Virtually all of your best people got lost in the dark at some point in their life. They probably broke some laws and can’t brag much about their 2.0 Grade Point average for 3.5 years of college. Yes, they often exhibit the highest Emotional Intelligence or EQ. They know people. They care.
When people who stumble hard and long enough in the dark eventually find the light, their purpose, it’s game on. You see a new energy, a desire that burns and drives them to perform at high levels, even if they don’t perhaps fit in with your team. As long as they are not toxic to the team, you keep them. They get sales and marketing results. These are the people we want on our team.
There is huge power in working with people who are clear on their purpose. When people are clear about your purpose in business they can align with your plan of action in sales and marketing. You will see a new flow; activity numbers increase, marketing results improve and you witness an overall shift in how you and your people work together. Business is good. Life is fun. You get to celebrate the hard work.
Purpose is powerful for people. Purpose in business is powerful when you have people who share this purpose with you. They want to come to work. They want to do a good job. They are willing to be accountable. They hit their goals. They are open, honest and real, for real.
What to do? If you are a business owner, focus each day on learning to align your business purpose with your people’s purposes, follow the same plan of action over long periods of time to attract, convert, and serve more happy, paying customers, measure results and you live life happily ever after. Help your people stay on purpose!
If you are on a career track, let your purpose find it’s way to alignment with your organization or team purpose. If you can’t or won’t, how long will you be happy and effective? What will it take to get you “on purpose?”
If you don’t know your purpose, keep searching. Heck, reach out to us and we’ll help you figure it out. We have a couple of ways we did this on our own!
Be honest. Does your business purpose align with your true purpose and that of the people on your team?