I heard today that assessments aimed at finding high-calibre personnel are no longer considering intelligence and talent but are now concentrating all attention on character.

While I expect this is an exaggeration of the current state of recruiting practices, I think it is wrong to underestimate the value of intelligence and talent. And, I believe the use of character assessment alone is a very troubling way to go about determining people’s wherewithal.  

Intelligence, Talents & Character: it seems to me all three of these things are critical to success. I can't imagine any meaningful achievement that does not contain portions of all of these attributes.  

Intelligence is multifaceted and can work in mysterious ways.  Regardless, it's hard to imagine anything being built without a significant level of intelligence. Intelligence correlates the success…in all endeavours.

Talents are the fundamental pieces required for mastery of task and the construction of all meaningful things. When people use their talents at work they take steps to fulfill their ultimate potential. The more they use their talents the greater their opportunity to succeed.

Character is the overriding quality that inspires thought, promotes trust, and influences action. Character is a construct of personal values, personal rules & morals, and a number of other facets, including self-control and power of will. Character is about authenticity and trueness, consistency and doing the right things. 

Clearly, character is an essential ingredient. It is easy to accept that character is the key ingredient. But, that should not confuse the facts around the importance of intelligence and talent. 

I recently read an article, written by a sales guru about four years ago. The article stated “relationship selling is dead”.  As I read this effort at sales wisdom, I had to smile. Obviously, the fellow who wrote this article has not attended some of the meetings I've been in recently. I've had the pleasure of sitting back and seeing some extraordinary relationship-selling and relationship-buying activity.

The conclusion: Don't believe the hogwash about the death of relationship selling.

There's no question, relationships are changing. This applies to relationships in general and more specifically to sales-client relationships. As an example, I believe it can be much more difficult to initiate sales-client relationships now than it used to be. This is particularly true if “relationship” is framed in face-to-face personal contact. 

For some people, relationship selling has fallen and always will fall somewhere between a challenge and an impossibility. My guess is the fellow who wrote “relationship selling is dead” is one of those people who either has never made an effort to sell or has made an effort and found the work to be somewhere between challenging and impossible. So, writing “relationship selling is dead” aligns very well with that person’s experiences, mindsets and natural talents. In other words, the person lacks the natural gifts that must exist if a person is to succeed at relationship selling. 

The fact is, for many people relationship selling is still alive and well. 

Don't let them hogwash you. Regardless of all the stereotyping and pedantic arguments provided by sales gurus, relationship selling still flourishes with some people. The sales gurus who possess sales ability understand relationships are a critical piece of the sales equation. The sales people who understand this don’t generally parade their sales views – they focus on getting sales done.

You have a choice in business. You can choose to pay your bills on time or you can choose to not pay your bills on time.

As a general rule, people who choose to not pay their bills on time have mediocre if any success in business.

It doesn’t matter if you believe in the law of attraction or not. That isn't what I'm talking about here. I’m talking about observation of successful and not-successful business people.

Successful people – people who enjoy long-term, sustained business success – pay their bills on time.

People who do not pay their bills on time may achieve short-lived business success.

People who do not pay their bills on time, sooner or later, end up failing at business.

Observe your clients – do they pay their bills on time?

Observe your employees [your followers] – do their pay their bills on time?

Observe yourself – do you pay your bills on time?

If not, change that before it becomes the bad habit that kills your chance for meaningful business success.