Your Assessment Results

Get The Amazon Best Seller!

Our new book Look Out Above! examines the critical soft skills required for professional success: Contribute, Write, Present, Pitch, Lead, and Advocate. We also explore the transformation process as you develop confidence and learn to trust your own judgment.

Thanks for taking the assessment. Here’s how you scored on each skill:

  • Contribute Total = 0%
  • Write Total = 0%
  • Present Total = 0%
  • Pitch Total = 0%
  • Lead Total = 0%
  • Advocate Total = 0%
  • Transform Total = 0%
  • Average Total = 0%

Please see below tailored material in the area where the assessment shows you could use the most improvement.

PITCH

It looks like you could use some help learning how to pitch your ideas more effectively in the workplace. As you progress and better understand your job, you’ll see opportunities for improvement that translate into ideas you want to propose: first, perhaps, to your manager and then, if your idea gains traction, to others. For those ideas to become reality, you must sell them. The ability to move others to action through non-sales selling is an essential business skill. The sooner you accept that generating and pitching ideas is an important part of your job, the better for your future success.

Pitching starts with an idea – one that if implemented would make a meaningful difference at your company. Perhaps by:

  • Generating revenue from new products or services, increasing revenue from an existing source, or charging for something now provided for free
  • Reducing expenses by improving efficiency or automating processes now performed manually, or eliminating products, services, or reports
  • Improving the customer experience, perhaps even if it costs more
  • Solving problems that impair effectiveness and cause delays
  • Introducing a new tool, or upgrading or switching technology platforms
  • Reducing risk, ensuring compliance, or preserving reputation
  • Devising a better way to gather and analyze data
  • Improving the quality of life at your company

Always be looking for ideas about new products or services, and for ways to do things better, faster, and cheaper. Try to think differently from others – perhaps more steps ahead, or more deeply. When it comes, the idea may take the form of a word, a phrase, a sentence, an image. While ideas come to people in different ways, here are a few ways to get the process going:

  • Start with sound subject matter knowledge.
  • Identify a problem you would like to solve and give yourself time to think about it.
  • Know when you do your best creative thinking and try to arrange your schedule so that at such times you’re relaxed and uninterrupted.
  • Be ready when inspiration strikes and write the idea down in as much detail as possible.

We can’t control how or when a great idea pops into our consciousness. What we can control, to some extent, is the ability to create circumstances conducive to triggering ideas. To learn how to effectively master the art of the business pitch, pick up your copy of Look Out Above! and skip straight to Chapter Four. And while you have the book, check out the other chapters, too. We promise they’re worth your while.