The people who arrive at success in sales follow many paths.  But each of them eventually discovers what to some will forever remain a secret.

The concept is straightforward.  Maximize your strengths, minimize your weaknesses.

This strikes a lot of people as counter-intuitive.  “I need to work on my listening skills.  I need to make a deliberate effort to stop jumping in and ending a prospect’s sentence for them in hopes of impressing them with my knowledge.”

These tactical skills are indeed important and can always use some attention.  But what we’re dealing with here are broader themes.

The salesperson who knows she is not one of those people who can light up a room with magnetism the moment she walks in becomes even better at listening.

The salesperson who knows he will never be a strong writer starts stripping down his presentations so he has more of an opportunity to verbalize, a skill at which he is gifted.

Chances are, the woman who is short in the charisma department will never achieve rock star status, no matter how hard she works at it.  But she can make sufficient improvements to do well.  At the same time, her focus on taking her listening skills to a new level puts her in a league of her own when it comes to empathy, understanding, and relationship building.

Of course, only when we arrive at the point in our career when we can step away from ourselves and build an objective list of our strengths and our weaknesses can we start to maximize the strengths and minimize the weaknesses.

But when this time arrives, the rewards are many. And when the frustrations of trying to achieve the improbable vanish, everything changes for the better.