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It's Only Common Sense: You Have to Be Impactful

Are you making an impact in your job, your career, and your life? No matter how hard you work, or how much dedication and work ethic you have, if you don’t develop a strategy to be impactful, it will all be for nothing. Being impactful means making a difference. It means being able to move forward, to progress in your career, and whatever project you are working on.

For example, if you have a sales position, and you are hardly working to keep your customers happy, occasionally picking up new customers, or just barely making your numbers (if you make them at all), you are not being impactful.

If you are a business leader who is happy with the status quo, striving to leave everything alone, and in the comfort zone, you are not being impactful. In fact, you are going backward, you are losing ground. Standing still in business is actually losing.

If you are an engineering manager, you can never be happy with your product. You have to be continually striving to make that product better. You must always be looking for an impactful way to improve the product.

The same goes for those of you in quality and customer service. No matter your position in the company, you must look for ways to be better, provide better service, and make an impact on your company and the industry.

The people who always stand out in any organization are those who understand they must make an impact. They must do something that will change things for the better.

The best way to be impactful is to study your product, services, and responsibilities, then find a better way to make a positive difference. You must set goals to accomplish that better way to make an impact.

When you think about your position in your career and your life, evaluate where you are and what you have been doing. Once you have established that base position, think hard about what it would take to make a significant improvement. How do you break out of the status quo and move that proverbial ball closer to the goal line?

What will that change look like? Is it enough of a change to be impactful? Will it really make a vital and significant difference?

Let’s assume you are in sales, for example. For the past few years, you have been doing just okay. You have been holding your own; nothing dramatic has occurred but you have been a true “Steady Eddie.” You might even feel good. Your boss might even be encouraging, saying things like, “I can always count on you, Steady Eddie, you’re always good for that $2 million.”

Now that might sound pretty good, but it is really just a velvet cage of mediocrity. It makes you feel safe in your comfort zone. So warm and safe that you never want to leave or extend yourself. You never want to stretch and take it to the next level and beyond.

But what if one day you look in the mirror and say, “I’m tired of being Steady Eddie. I’m tired of making the same amount of money year after year. I want to do something great. I want to double my sales next year. I want to sell $4 million worth of goods.”

Now that’s a goal, a very admirable one. That’s impactful. Now, your next step is figuring out how to accomplish that goal. How are you going to double your sales next year?

You need a plan. Just saying that you want to double your sales will not cut it. You need a good and logical plan. You have to get to work. Remember that hope is not a strategy.

Here are some examples of solid directional steps you can take to achieve your goal of doubling your sales next year:

1. Find out the average yearly expected sales of your customers.
2. Review those current customers and decide how much more of their business you can capture.
3. Come up with a plan to increase your business with those accounts.
4. Figure out how many additional customers it will take to make up the difference.
5. Decide how many new customers you must acquire and then devise a plan to win prospects and acquire new customers.

Now you have a plan, you have made a tactical roadmap to accomplishing your goal, and you are on your way to making an impact, both in your company and your life.

It’s only common sense.

Dan Beaulieu is president of D.B. Management Group.