Top 10 Tips for Professional Development

Whether you’re an experienced roofer or a young professional in any career path, your personal development plan is important. We’ve come up with 10 great tips to help you put your professional development on track:

1. Know Your Outcome:
   Your ability to reach that next level starts with you knowing exactly what it is you want to accomplish.
2. Determine Your Next Steps:
   Once you know where you’re going, you’d be well-advised to identify exactly what needs to happen (within your own power and control) to put you in the best position to achieve those results.
3. Measure Your Results:
   Your personal action plan needs to include the specific actions, start and completion dates and the different ways you will measure your effectiveness.
4. Strike A Balance:
   Don’t let your professional life grow at the expense of your personal life. You serve many different roles, such as parent, spouse, and friend (to name a few) and it’s important to find a way to not neglect any of them.
5. Schedule Your Priorities:
   Your ability to get to that next level is the critical difference between scheduling your priorities as opposed to simply prioritizing your schedule. Make sure you focus on the tasks that will have the greatest impact on your ability to achieve the results you seek.
6. Add More Value:
   In what ways can you contribute and add value beyond the scope of your job description? The more value you add, the more it increases the value of your personal brand and position yourself as an even more valuable asset to the team.

See also: Four Easy Steps to Controlling your Destiny with Referrals

7. Expand Your Bandwidth:
   Take full advantage of how-to videos, business-development blogs, books, white papers and trade publications to help you improve your skill sets.
8. Raise Your Standards:
   We all need to recognize that the things we did to get us where we are today are not necessarily the things that are going to take you to the next level. Challenge yourself to expect a greater achievement today than you did yesterday.
9. Learn To Debrief:
   Learn to scrutinize the effectiveness of every task you undertake and interpersonal interaction you have. Ask yourself how you did, what you learned and what you would do differently if you had the chance to do it over.
10. Be Accountable:
    This is perhaps the most important recommendation on this list. Everyone needs to recognize that we are responsible for our outcomes. While there will be plenty of obstacles, we need to identify and take action on the tasks that will put us in the best position to be successful in spite of those challenges.

Share this with someone you think is excited about ‘leveling-up’ their pro game this spring!

Get them to think past their next-door neighbors and immediate family by asking if they discussed their project with anyone at work, school,  or the tennis club,  and ask if any of those people expressed any need or concern about their home. This is a good time to discuss your referral program and how their friends or family will benefit from their referral. It’s really as simple as that.

If you’re interested in learning more, please visit iko.com to see a list of my upcoming sales workshops. I’m John DeRosa; I hope to see you there.