Evaluating a practice to determine how to market requires honest soul-searching. It's bad when we are dishonest with others. It is also damaging when we aren't honest with ourselves.
In order for a practice to improve for growth, we must be aware of our shortcomings and once they are identified, we must be willing to correct them. It's hard to admit when we are wrong, but admitting our faults puts us on the road to getting better at what we do. If we need more education about our industry, instead of denying the need, we should acknowledge it. Then we can set aside the time necessary to get what we need.
I have found that a significant number of producers pass off shortcomings as skills they don't really need. They may just be too lazy to really do the work necessary. It's also embarrassing, in our world, to admit that we are inadequate in some areas.
That's ok; actually nobody really needs to know that we have realized that our failures are our own fault. We can just quietly and discreetly go about improving. No big announcements are necessary, just the resolve to accept the problems and the character to make them right.
Addressing prospecting with evaluation in mind, we need to discover what really works for us. Be careful with the "for us." Just because methods work for others doesn't necessarily mean that they are transferrable concepts for our practice.
We are bombarded with wonderful new and exciting prospecting methods. Some are useful to us and some are not. This is where evaluation comes in. Don't fall into the feelings trap either. Sometimes our feelings betray us. I have to beware that a bad feeling about a prospecting method isn't just my excuse for being lazy. It may be that I just don't want to do the work necessary or spend the money necessary to execute a good method.
