Empowering Your Sales Workforce
By Katlynn Goodsell, TMSA Marketing Intern
Out of all of the breakout sessions at the recent TMSA conference, this definitely wasn’t one to miss. The presenter, Chris Patterson of Jacksonville-based Interchanges, began his session by telling his personal story. He explained how, at a younger age, he "got a little lost," dropped out of school, and was stuck inside his own mind until his father took him to see a man by the name of Zig Zigler. Later in life, Zigler ended up mentoring him for a year in exchange for three hours of personal training per week. What an amazing opportunity for Chris! This man became a huge mentor to Chris, and because of him he decided to turn his life around and use his life to his full potential.
Chris talked a lot about the types of people who can be toxic in the world place. In the true spirit of "The Walking Dead," he described them as zombies: Gossip zombies, foot dragging zombies, and drama zombies.
He offered solutions on to avoid becoming these negative zombies, and how he motivates people to be the best versions they can be. Some important solutions he gave were building good character, relationships, self-esteem, and goal setting.
After he handed out printouts to us as session attendees, he had us take an assessment through which we each ranked ourselves on how we were doing in a number of areas such as finance, career, relationships, personal, spiritual, etc. After everyone ranked their scores and found out their results we got another sheet of paper that had all of these topics in a circle, and we had to place a dot on the area that our score fell and connect the dots in a circle in order to see how balanced our life was. Based on the reactions in the room, many people were surprised at the results.
One important thing I took away from this exercise is that regardless of where we are all at, we can always do something to improve our lives and to live a more balanced life. Being able to identify when something is wrong is the first step. Then we must take logical steps to make improvements. Lastly, all parts of our lives are important and we can't be successful in one aspect and fail in another. By having our "wheel in balance," we have the ability to eliminate some of the stresses of our lives and live a smooth ride.