Don't Sell Yourself Short

This morning I had to get up at the crack of dawn for a conference call that involved people from around the world. For the past couple of years I have been involved with a company that created software to quantify how salespeople are successful. Once you know why, you can then coach your other salespeople to be more like them. This morning's call was with our management and the management of another large company interested in buying us.

I sat in my office watching a Webex demo of our software thinking how glad I was that it was someone else giving the demo. I have watched plenty of software demos using Webex or GotoMeeting but have never had the pleasure of starting the demo. I'm sure I could figure it out, I just have never done it.

The whole experience made me think back to a spreadsheet I once saw at a friend's house. I thought I was a big Microsoft Excel user until I saw what my buddy was using to keep track of his daily bicycle rides. The spreadsheet was a work of art. There were lots of different colors with graphs showing day-over-day performance increases. I knew Excel could do all of that but had never seen anyone use all of those features.

Amazingly the person giving this morning's demo and my friend with the elaborate spreadsheet don't consider themselves as knowledgable computer users. Given the choice of rating themselves as novice, intermediate, or expert, they would both choose novice. I think they deserve better.

Anyone that uses a computer daily deserves more than a novice self score for computer proficiency. You may only use your computer for e-mail or writing a BLOG, but that gives you some experience. So if you see yourself as a computer novice but are a frequent user, then don't sell yourself short. The next time someone asks you about your computer skills, confidently reply, "I'm a BLOG reading expert."