Mindset (part 2): How to Find Out Who You Are
Written by Jerry Roberts. Follow me on Twitter.
Attitude, Change, Communication

Strange title for a post — How to Find Out Who You Are? Maybe, but when you understand where I’m going with this, I think you’ll realize the relevance.
I led a training session for the Chamber of Commerce today that focused on streetsmart marketing strategies, guiding about 50 people through exercises to increase their awareness of their personal market standing. One of the questions was “Who are you?”
Put away your I.D.
I’m not sure that anyone was on the same page with me as I started, but they quickly picked it up. The answer lies in the minds of the people we market to — whether that marketing is external (customers and vendors) or internal (support staff and other coworkers).
Everybody has an opinion of us in both a personal and work-related sense and, like it or not, that’s who we are so far as the market is concerned. We don’t have to agree with how people see us but, as the saying goes, perception is reality.
Managing opinion — the why
And that reality determines whether or not you decide that I’m worth dealing with and how much effort you’ll invest into that relationship. If you’re a customer or prospect, that extends to how much money you’ll spend with me.
If I connect with 1,000 people in the pursuit of business, then there are 1,000 somewhat different opinions of me. As I worked with the group today I think that began to sink in.
Our success is determined by how people feel about us, and we’d better be aware of what they’re thinking about when our name pops up.
Hey, if they don’t like me they know what they can do…
Our ego will tell us that we’re okay as we are. If you think that nobody has issues with you and that you’re humming along just fine, I hope you’re right. But if you’re like most of us, you’re leaving some potential on the table because others have decided that they don’t want to deal with you, or will do so at a minimum.
It’s impossible to quantify what that potential represents in terms of dollars, but what if it meant an additional 20%, 30%, or 50% a year? Does that get your interest?
It’s so easy to blow off this whole idea, until you visualize that annual potential in dollars, multiplied by the number of years remaining in your career. All of a sudden we’re talking real money here; sales that aren’t made, promotions that go to others.
What to do
We can start to get a handle on how the market feels about us by doing one simple thing, which most of us will absolutely hate — ask people.
If I told you that your assignment after reading this post was to start asking your coworkers, vendors, and customers to tell you how they view you, how would you feel about that? How would you view me for asking you to do such a thing?
You might respond that people won’t be honest when confronted with such a request, or a large number would do anything possible to avoid complying with it. You’d be at least partially right on both counts.
I’ve gone through this exercise but did so by asking both in person and over the phone. Let me tell you, that was really uncomfortable for both parties — particularly in the case of employees. I thought I was giving them a chance to vent if necessary, but I was actually tossing unnecessary stress their way. They were nervous to answer. Some did, but I wasn’t happy with what I got. It was vanilla and didn’t provide much I could use.
Even clients didn’t want to do it. A few people I had known for over 20 years consented and I got some value from it, but most evaded the issue.
Getting the answers
Whatever you do the survey must be anonymous. If we want a good response people must be able to conceal their identity. This means using an online survey. Don’t even think about requiring them to list their name or e-mail address.
- Step one, go to polldaddy.com or surveymonkey.com and set up a free account.
- Then divide people into a couple of groups. One is those people with whom we have had a long relationship or consistent dealings over a considerable period of time. The other group is those we connect with less.
- Next we devise a survey with questions that get at the heart of what we want to know, but which are slightly different for each group. The people who have had much experience in dealing with us ought to be able to provide us with considerably more information, so our questions to them will be more in depth.
Coming tomorrow: the questions to ask on the survey

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